Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth
by John Garth (HarperCollins, 2003)
Garth’s knowledge of Tolkien’s writings leads at times to an overwhelming focus on the minutiae of his invented languages and mythology. The strictly biographical aspects are more accessible, giving a good sense of (educated) life pre- and during the First World War.
The Silmarillion
by J. R. R. Tolkien (Allen & Unwin, 1977); audiobook read by Martin Shaw (HarperCollins, 2015)
A posthumously compiled addendum to Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, demonstrating the epic imagination that underpinned these works but none of their narrative pull. In essence: a vast and proclamatory, untethered bore, which not even Martin Shaw’s sonorous narration can make worth persisting with.