[Kalimac]

The vast majority of the writers that I've read are British, and as Lush says, there are so many wonderful ones it's hard to say that Tolkien is *the* best - partly it also depends on what kind of literature you're looking for. Robert Browning, to pull a random example, was a great British author as was Tolkien (even though Tolkien didn't really like Browning that much), but it's hard to really compare them head to head - comparing "The Ring and the Book" to the Ring of Doom just doesn't work; they're not at all in the same vein. And I'd hesitate to rank Tolkien above Shakespeare and Chaucer. Can't we just leave it at saying that Tolkien was definitely one of the literary Olympians?

Resurrecting old threads is problematic in a couple of ways; I can see that there have been some great debates there, but sometimes the old question has just run out of steam and it needs to be rephrased. Also if you're resurrecting a thread from a year or so ago, most of the people who posted on it may no longer post here, or at least not do so frequently. It's a little difficult to carry on a debate with people who don't respond any more.