J R R Tolkien and his works cast a long shadow. It is impossible to write in the fantasy genre without reflecting him in some way. His influence can be traced as far as Iris Murdoch and A S Byatt (both fans), as well as to countless poor imitators, parodies and role-playing games. Meanwhile, his estate fans the flames, churning out items as spurious as The Bovadium Fragments (2025), a satire on Oxford planning regulations. 

What of the man himself? Tolkien was suspicious of biography and deterred investigators from searching for resonances in his works. Humphrey Carpenter’s is the sole authorised biography (1977); but John Ronald Reuel remains enigmatic as an elf. A gentlemanly, conservative, devoutly Catholic don who hardly left Oxford, he yet produced one of the most glittering imaginative works of fiction of all time.

D J Taylor, in this fascinating account, tries to work out how it was done. By looking at Tolkien’s literary and social contexts, he seeks the man he calls (after a dwarvish character) the King Under the Mountain, organising his material by theme; it is a biographical inquiry, expertly interwoven