32 Facts About Christopher Tolkien

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien was an English and naturalised French academic editor and writer.

The son of the author and academic JR R Tolkien, Christopher edited 24 volumes based on his father's posthumously published work, including The Silmarillion and the 12-volume series The History of Middle-Earth, a task that took 45 years.

Christopher Tolkien drew the original maps for his father's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.

Outside his father's unfinished works, Christopher edited three tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and his father's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Christopher Tolkien scholars have remarked that he used his skill as a philologist, demonstrated in his editing of those medieval works, to research, collate, edit, and comment on his father's Middle-earth writings exactly as if they were real-world legends.

Christopher Tolkien was born on 21 November 1924 in Leeds, England, the third of four children and the youngest son of JR R and Edith Tolkien.

Christopher Tolkien was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, and later at the Roman Catholic Oratory School near Reading.

Christopher Tolkien won a place to study English at Trinity College, Oxford, still aged 17, but after a year and a half there he received his call-up papers for military service.

Christopher Tolkien joined the Royal Air Force in July 1943 and at the start of 1944 was sent to South Africa for flight training.

Christopher Tolkien gained his "wings" as a fighter pilot and was commissioned in January 1945.

Christopher Tolkien was given a posting back in England in February 1945, at Market Drayton in Shropshire.

Christopher Tolkien was for a long time part of the critical audience for his father's fiction, first as a child listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins, and then as a teenager and young adult offering feedback on The Lord of the Rings throughout its 15-year gestation.

Christopher Tolkien redrew his father's working maps for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings.

Christopher Tolkien's father invited him to join the Inklings, a literary discussion group, when Christopher was 21 years old.

Christopher Tolkien became a lecturer in English language at St Catherine's Society, Oxford in 1954.

Christopher Tolkien moved to France and continued this task for 45 years.

In 2016 Christopher Tolkien won a Bodley Medal, an award that recognises outstanding contributions to literature, culture, science, and communication.

Christopher Tolkien served as chairman of the Tolkien Estate, the entity formed to handle the business side of his father's literary legacy, and as a trustee of the Tolkien Charitable Trust.

Christopher Tolkien resigned as director of the estate in 2017.

Christopher Tolkien wrote a great deal of material in the Middle-earth legendarium that remained unpublished in his lifetime.

Christopher Tolkien had originally intended to publish The Silmarillion alongside The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s, but it was rejected by his publisher.

Christopher Tolkien once called his son his "chief critic and collaborator", and named him his literary executor.

Christopher Tolkien organised the masses of his father's unpublished writings, some of them written on odd scraps of paper half a century earlier.

It, along with Beren and Luthien, published in 2017, and The Fall of Gondolin, published in 2018, constituted what JR R Tolkien called the three "Great Tales" of the "Elder Days".

Christopher Tolkien edited some works by his father that were unconnected to the Middle-earth legendarium.

Christopher Tolkien gives two reasons for this: that The Silmarillion reveals his own writing style and "the choices he made in 'constructing'" the narrative; and that he had to devise parts of the story, both to fill gaps and when "threads were impossible to weave together".

Christopher Tolkien's editing of the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, using his skill as a philologist, created an editorial frame for his father's legendarium, and for the books derived from it.

In 2001 Christopher Tolkien expressed doubts over The Lord of the Rings film trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, questioning the viability of a film interpretation that retained the essence of the work, but stressed that this was just his opinion.

Christopher Tolkien's work is featured in the National Portrait Gallery.

Christopher Tolkien married Baillie Klass in 1967; they had two children, Adam and Rachel.

Christopher Tolkien felt that The Lord of the Rings was "peculiarly unsuitable for transformation into visual dramatic form", whilst his son became involved as an advisor with the series.

Christopher Tolkien died on 16 January 2020, at the age of 95, in Draguignan, Var, France.