Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature there from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
From the book
This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included
many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon after _The
Hobbit_ was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I
wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had
then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little
hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic
in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish
tongues.
When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected _little hope_ to _no hope,_ I went
back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits
and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an
account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. The
process had begun in the writing of _The Hobbit,_ in which there were already some references to
the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen
unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the
Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to
the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.
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