Tolkien created worlds that only exist in our minds. That is, of course, the primary duty of a writer; but few wordsmiths fulfil this task so beautifully compelling as Tolkien. Father to the Hobbits, creator of Middle Earth and inventor of the One Ring: the books, places and languages he put to paper are now widely understood, and even more loved. Born in South Africa, Tolkien became a writer, poet, Oxford professor, and was even appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. He saw the majority of his friends die in World War I, and may have died in duty himself, had he not been declared unfit to fight due to trench fever. The professor spoke at least 20 languages (even dead languages like Old English and Medieval Welsh) and used his gift of language to create a secret code for his worried wife Edith during the war; to track his movements on a map of the Western Front. Genius simply doesnt cut it; the man was truly a wizard. With the hype of the impending Hobbit movie ever-growing, its time to look at the lesser known facts about the legend who started it all: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
