[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I share a house with a two postgraduates, neither of whom knows or particularly wants to know a lot about Tolkien. In my family I am the undisputed authority, although they're all becoming conversant with him thanks to my incessant recommendations. My sister has read LotR, and my mother has been reading it on and off for about a year (busy people have little time for reading); my brother and my father are tougher nuts to crack, since neither tends to do much recreational reading. They have seen the films, though.

This is quite ironic, since it was my parents who first got me interested in Tolkien by buying me a copy of The Hobbit for Christmas when I was eight. Apparently it was chosen on the basis of the synopsis on its dust jacket because it sounded like the sort of story I might enjoy. More than twenty years on, I'm studying for an M.A. in Tolkien's field, largely thanks to that one gift. If I'm any kind of an expert, I think that they deserve at least some of the credit.

I'm not sure who knows the most about Tolkien on the course. I do know an up-and-coming runologist who has learned the Tengwar, which I still haven't mastered; and as one would expect my supervisor knows a lot more than I do about Tolkien's sources and professional work. When I really want to be humbled, though, I come to the dear old Barrow Downs and read the arguments in The Books; or I open up the HoME and consider the scholarship that went into Tolkien's recreational writing. There's always a better authority somewhere.