The creator of Lord of the Rings receives the ultimate accolade

A brush with greatness
feel I HEAR the
name of JRR Tolkien I always
feel somewhat guilty and ashamed. It all began for me in the sombre and uncertain years of war in 1943 when he welcomed me into his north Oxford house, perhaps even showed me some of the then-unpublished pages of The Lord of the Rings, his magnum opus that has just been judged the greatest book of the 20th century in a mammoth survey of 25,000 people.
Tolkien was not then widely known outside the narrow confines of Oxbridge and academe. Before the war he had written The Hobbit, but this had hardly brought him general fame and certainly not the trappings of wealth. In fact, if we are discussing fame it was his friend and colleague, CS Lewis (whom he always called Jack) who had far more publicity in 1943 with the impact of his Screwtape Letters. I, with my provincial ignorance of the ways of the literary and intellectual world, had never even heard of Tolkien. But he was the first Oxford professor that I had ever met face to face and the delightful fact was that he had behaved to me like a true scholar-gentleman.
I was then a fairly clever, but fairly callow, 18-year-old, fresh and unbruised by life from the North of England for whom Oxford at first taste was almost a foreign hinterland with bizarre rules and traps to snare both the arrogant and the innocent. In about a quarter of an hour Tolkien gave me a confidence and an optimism that he so easily could have destroyed with a cutting phrase or a supercilious quip. Just imagine if I had encountered one of those modern-day, smart-alec, television-preening dons who have now despoiled what is left of the high tables of Oxford.
Here was a professor who looked like a professor (CS Lewis looked more like an intellectual butcher). Tolkien wore cords and a sports jacket, smoked a reassuring pipe, laughed a lot, sometimes mumbled when his thoughts outstripped words, looked in those days to my idealistic eyes like the young Leslie Howard, the film actor. There was a sense of civilisation, winsome sanity and sophistication about him.
I have not the space to explain fully here how I came to be in Tolkien's study at 20 Northmoor Road on an October morning of genial sunshine. Enough in this instance to say that on arriving in Oxford I had decided to change my academic plans from reading philosophy to reading English. Tolkien was the professor who could sanc tion this. If I had been an embryonic Chaucer or Milton he could hardly have been more enthusiastic.
Of course, I should read English. Of course, my English talents (??) would be lost in the arid climate of philosophy and in metaphysical dispute. Was I interested in Anglo-Saxon and Old English? I lied through my teeth and said "Yes." He
showed me various texts and illustrations which I affected to appreciate. He proffered me pages of writing in his own hand (I have convinced myself that they were future bits of The Lord of the Rings).
I left his house, with its books, pipesmoke and obvious testaments to children and family life, with a jaunty step. Oxford was already a different place. Thanks to Tolkien I was about to enjoy myself. I did not know then that I was never going to enjoy Anglo-Saxon or Old English and that, such is my character and literary taste, that sadly I was never going to enjoy fully the books of Tolkien that were to grace the years ahead.
After about six months of Oxford I went away to war and forgot about the university and the world of dons. I chose to think that it was shyness, rather than ingratitude, that prevented me from sending Tolkien even a postcard from one of my more exotic anchorages in the East.
Returning to Oxford in 1947 I heard much of him but saw little. Literature, not language or philology, was my interest. I did not even attend any of his lectures on the specious grounds that I found it hard to hear what he said. There were at the time more publicity-seeking figures, such as AJP Taylor. My Oxford career was obviously destined to slide to its undistinguished close without my meeting him again. Then, something happened.
I became engaged and discovered that my future wife's family had been friends in north Oxford with the Tolkiens for many years. My future father-in-law, a doctor, had even bought the professor's old car when petrol rationing brought normal motoring to an end in the war. I liked this. Somehow Hobbits and motor-cars did not seem to make sense.
Tolkien re-entered my life. He was still the kind man who had befriended me when there was no need, still laughed and gently mocked the world, still mumbled and puffed his pipe. Later he made a gracious and witty speech at our wedding which made me feel more guilty.
In the years since few things have given me greater pleasure than Tolkien's literary success although I am unable to say whether The Lord of the Rings is the greatest book of the 20th century.
What I can say is that there is something truly inspirational in a man such as Tolkien, a true Catholic who stood four square for civilised decency, receiving such an accolade in a century that so often applauds the mean-spirited and the scintillatingly meretricious.