Tolkien and the Great War

How the First World War influenced the author of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy: “Very much the best book about J.R.R.   Tolkien that has yet been written.” —A. N. Wilson As Europe plunged into World War I, J. R. R. Tolkien was a student at Oxford and part of a cohort of literary-minded friends who had wide-ranging conversations in their Tea Club and Barrovian Society. After finishing his degree, Tolkien experienced the horrors of the Great War as a signal officer in the Battle of the Somme,