Just two miles up the road from me, at 2 Darn­ley Road, West Park, is a fine old semi-detached Edwar­dian dwelling which bears a blue plaque declar­ing this as the one-time home of J R R Tolkien when he was Read­er in Eng­lish at Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1920s. This was some years before The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings but it is still quite a thrill to know that the young Tolkien was study­ing so close to where I’m writ­ing now. I dis­cov­ered The Hob­bit whilst at school and absolute­ly loved it, and I’ll nev­er for­get the book cov­er: it was this one here, that took a few scrolls to find amongst the myr­i­ad dif­fer­ent ver­sions!

The Hob­bit turned out to be a spring­board to the much larg­er, grown-up, epic high fan­ta­sy nov­el that was The Lord of the Rings. What an amaz­ing piece of work! It is a jour­ney for the read­er just as it is a jour­ney for the char­ac­ters. It is under­pinned, of course, by an aston­ish­ing depth of schol­ar­ship on its author’s part. Tolkien stud­ied ety­mol­o­gy and philol­o­gy, and, as a keen medieval­ist, pro­duced, whilst still at Leeds and long before writ­ing his books, A Mid­dle Eng­lish Vocab­u­lary and the defin­i­tive edi­tion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Also whilst at Leeds, Tolkien com­plet­ed a trans­la­tion of Beowulf, which was a pow­er­ful influ­ence on his lat­er Mid­dle-earth “leg­en­dar­i­um” (this was Tolkien’s own term for his body of fic­tion­alised mythol­o­gy that would inform The Lord of the Rings). He also stud­ied the Prose Edda and Norse mythol­o­gy, as well as the Finnish Kale­vala and oth­er Scan­di­na­vian myth­ic lit­er­a­ture. Tolkien’s knowl­edge of the myr­i­ad leg­ends and myths of the Mid­dle Ages and ear­li­er would give rise to the world of Mid­dle-earth with its inhab­i­tants of hob­bits, men, elves, dwarves, wiz­ards, orcs and trolls famil­iar to Tolkien read­ers of today.

As most peo­ple know (but here’s a brief sum­ma­ry any­way), the sto­ry revolves around the Dark Lord Sauron, who in an ear­li­er age cre­at­ed the One Ring, allow­ing him to rule the oth­er Rings of Pow­er giv­en to men, dwarves, and elves, in his cam­paign to con­quer all of Mid­dle-earth. From home­ly begin­nings in the Shire, a hob­bit land rem­i­nis­cent of the Eng­lish coun­try­side, the sto­ry ranges across Mid­dle-earth, fol­low­ing the quest to destroy the One Ring, seen main­ly through the eyes of the hob­bits Fro­do, Sam, Mer­ry, and Pip­pin. Aid­ing the hob­bits are the wiz­ard Gan­dalf, the men Aragorn and Boromir, the elf Lego­las, and the dwarf Gim­li, who unite as the Com­pa­ny of the Ring in order to ral­ly the Free Peo­ples of Mid­dle-earth against Sauron’s armies and give Fro­do a chance to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

Here’s an excerpt from the ear­li­er stages of the sto­ry (in Book 1, The Fel­low­ship of the Ring), when the hob­bits have recent­ly left their beloved Shire behind and ven­tured beyond to the town of Bree where they stay overnight in the Pranc­ing Pony inn, and meet Aragorn (Strid­er) for the first time. I choose it because it it was the first time (though not the last) of expe­ri­enc­ing a real thrill whilst read­ing it: that grad­ual tran­si­tion from a sense of fore­bod­ing about this dark stranger in the cor­ner to the real­i­sa­tion that Strid­er was in fact an ally, and a safe pair of hands at that!

Sud­den­ly Fro­do noticed that a strange-look­ing weath­er­beat­en man, sit­ting in the shad­ows near the wall, was also lis­ten­ing intent­ly to the hob­bit-talk. He had a tall tankard in front of him, and was smok­ing a long-stemmed pipe curi­ous­ly carved. His legs were stretched out before him, show­ing high boots of sup­ple leather that fit­ted him well, but had seen much wear and were now caked with mud. A trav­el-stained cloak of heavy dark-green cloth was drawn close about him, and in spite of the heat of the room he wore a hood that over­shad­owed his face; but the gleam of his eyes could be seen as he watched the hob­bits.

‘Who is that?’ Fro­do asked, when he got a chance to whis­per to Mr. But­ter­bur. ‘I don’t think you intro­duced him?’

‘Him?’ said the land­lord in an answer­ing whis­per, cock­ing an eye with­out turn­ing his head. ‘I don’t right­ly know. He is one of the wan­der­ing folk – Rangers we call them. He sel­dom talks: not but what he can tell a rare tale when he has the mind. He dis­ap­pears for a month, or a year, and then he pops up again. He was in and out pret­ty often last spring; but I haven’t seen him about late­ly. What his right name is I’ve nev­er heard: but he’s known round here as Strid­er. Goes about at a great pace on his long shanks; though he don’t tell nobody what cause he has to hur­ry. But there’s no account­ing for East and West, as we say in Bree, mean­ing the Rangers and the Shire-folk, beg­ging your par­don. Fun­ny you should ask about him.’ But at that moment Mr. But­ter­bur was called away by a demand for more ale and his last remark remained unex­plained.

Fro­do found that Strid­er was now look­ing at him, as if he had heard or guessed all that had been said. Present­ly, with a wave of his hand and a nod, he invit­ed Fro­do to come over and sit by him. As Fro­do drew near he threw back his hood, show­ing a shag­gy head of dark hair flecked with grey, and in a pale stern face a pair of keen grey eyes.

‘I am called Strid­er,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Mas­ter – Under­hill, if old But­ter­bur got your name right.’

‘He did,’ said Fro­do stiffly. He felt far from com­fort­able under the stare of those keen eyes.

‘Well, Mas­ter Under­hill,’ said Strid­er, ‘if I were you, I should stop your young friends from talk­ing too much. Drink, fire, and chance-meet­ing are pleas­ant enough, but, well this isn’t the Shire. There are queer folk about. Though I say it as shouldn’t, you may think,’ he added with a wry smile, see­ing Frodo’s glance. ‘And there have been even stranger trav­ellers through Bree late­ly,’ he went on, watch­ing Frodo’s face.

Fro­do returned his gaze but said noth­ing; and Strid­er made no fur­ther sign. His atten­tion seemed sud­den­ly to be fixed on Pip­pin. To his alarm Fro­do became aware that the ridicu­lous young Took, encour­aged by his suc­cess with the fat May­or of Michel Delv­ing, was now actu­al­ly giv­ing a com­ic account of Bilbo’s farewell par­ty. He was already giv­ing an imi­ta­tion of the Speech, and was draw­ing near to the aston­ish­ing Dis­ap­pear­ance.

Fro­do was annoyed. It was a harm­less enough tale for most of the local hob­bits, no doubt: just a fun­ny sto­ry about those fun­ny peo­ple away beyond the Riv­er; but some (old But­ter­bur, for instance) knew a thing or two, and had prob­a­bly heard rumours long ago about Bilbo’s van­ish­ing. It would bring the name of Bag­gins to their minds, espe­cial­ly if there had been inquiries in Bree after that name. Fro­do fid­get­ed, won­der­ing what to do. Pip­pin was evi­dent­ly much enjoy­ing the atten­tion he was get­ting, and had become quite for­get­ful of their dan­ger. Fro­do had a sud­den fear that in his present mood he might even men­tion the Ring; and that might well be dis­as­trous.

‘You had bet­ter do some­thing quick!’ whis­pered Strid­er in his ear.