“... that everyone in his battalion had been killed or taken prisoner at the Chemin des Dames. He went straight back to hospital and was finally discharged in October 1918. ‘He was not malingering,’ Humphrey Carpenter writes in his biography. But imagine Tolkien’s guilt, the terror, the shame.After the Armistice, Tolkien worked for a short time on the Oxford ...”

“... schoolday routine. At half-past ten we mustered in the playground by the toilets – no talking, straight lines, wipe your noses please – then set off through the Camp. We passed by Sir John Moore’s pokey little museum, the Folkestone bus stop and the abandoned cinema. We trundled across playing fields, skirted stinging nettles, rounded unknown ...”

“... car. He had spent thirty years in the Sussex Police, and attended the Brighton bombing. He headed straight to the rendezvous point. There were vehicles, people and fire engines everywhere – it was 3 a.m. – and he had to abandon his car at Avondale Park and walk up Walmer Road to Silver Control on Bomore, just under the tower, where the fire commanders ...”