Absolutely wonderful book with profound insights into Tolkien’s philosophy. Tremendous perspective on Tolkien‘s early years, deep school friendships, and the impact of serving on the western front in World War I. Garth absolutely nails how Tolkien was neither a facile optimist or needlessly materialist pessimist. Garth makes a brilliant distinction between Tolkien and other World War I writers like Owen and Sassoon. I don’t agree with A.N. Wilson on much but he’s right in saying that this is the best book about JRR Tolkien that has yet been written. Long live the spirit of the TCBS!

An eye opening account of Tolkien's Great War experience in the context of his friendships as well as his development as an author. Overall engaging and the specific recollections and letters between friends before their deaths were particularly moving. You feel the loss of young life so keenly when you are given a glimpse into their hearts and minds, with all of its hope and optimism for their futures.
The book does get bogged down by details at times and I would have enjoyed it more with less blow-by-blow technicalities, but overall excellent book. 4/5.

Besides showing how Tolkien’s war experiences and the fellowship of young scholars of whom Tolkien was a part helped shape The Lord of the Rings, John Garth gives a superb analysis of Tolkien's place in literature. The best part is the Epilogue.

“Just when the old ways of telling were being misused by the military propagandists and rejected by the trench writers, Tolkien envisioned ‘The Book of Lost Tales’, a sequence of stories salvaged from the wreck of history. That he saw the value in traditions that most others rejected is one of his gifts to posterity: truth should never be the property of one literary mode, any more than it should be the monopoly of one authoritarian voice. Tolkien was not immune to epochal change, however. He did not simply preserve the traditions the war threatened, but reinvigorated them for his own era.”

“The distillation of experience into myth could reveal the prevailing elements in a moral morass such as the Great War, show the big picture where trench writers like Robert Graves tended to home in on the detail. Tolkien is not the first mythographer to produce a grave and pertinent epic in time of war and revolution. However else they differ from him, in this John Milton and William Blake are his forebears. When the world changes, and reality assumes an unfamiliar face, the epic and fantastic imagination may thrive.”