‘An extraordinary book. It deals with a stupendous theme. It leads us through a succession of strange and astonishing episodes, some of them magnificent, in a region where everything is invented, forest, moor, river, wilderness, town and the races which inhabit them.’ Observer‘Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century.’ Sunday Telegraph‘The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them