King Under The Mountain

Does the world need another Tolkien biography? Well yes, if it is as refreshing, broadly scoped and interestingly written as this one. To be fair, it isn’t a biography in the Humphrey Carpenter sense, still less a hagiography. It does cover Tolkien’s life, but that is only a third of the book. It also takes a much more, shall we say, sceptical look at his life, for example, the influence of the Inklings both on the wider world and on Tolkien himself. We also see how little there is of Tolkien’s own wife in his story, almost all told only through comments about her illnesses. There is a similar healthy scepticism about the actual works, acknowledging that, no, the Silmarillion doesn’t come together as a coherent novel and that the poetry isn’t really that good; while at the same time acknowledging both how good the Lord of the Rings is and the huge influence it has had on modern popular culture. There are interesting quotes from various cultural figures about their own relationship…