grundyscribbling

If the measure of a person is in how much they touched the lives of others, Christopher Tolkien stands among giants. He did not have to devote his life to sharing his father's work with the world, but he did. He was the first cartographer of Middle Earth, and probably the first scholar of it as well. In fact, he's indirectly responsible for J.R.R. Tolkien sharing his writing with the wider world at all - if not for him calling out his father for inconsistencies in bedtime stories, the Hobbit might not have been written down, remaining a wonderful story for the Tolkien family alone. Without the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings would not have been published. There would be no Silmarillion, no histories of Middle Earth, no tale of Beren and Luthien. So Christopher Tolkien has my heartfelt thanks, and that of many a Tolkien fan, as we wish him fair winds and following seas.