The King Under the Mountain: In Search of J. R. R. Tolkien

A sparkling exploration of the myths that J. R. R. Tolkien created around himself, examining the social and political worlds that surrounded the creator of Middle-Earth, by award-winning biographer D. J. Taylor.

In the past seven decades J.R.R. Tolkien’s major works—The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion—have sold over half a billion copies, been made into prodigiously successful Hollywood movies, and had an incalculable influence on the generations of fantasy writers who fo...