J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography

by Humphrey Carpenter

I think that many confuse “applicability” with “allegory”; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.’ As C. S. Lewis wrote of The Lord of the Rings: ‘These things were not devised to reflect any particular situation in the real world. It was the other way round; real events began, horribly, to conform to the pattern he had freely invented.’

‘I am dreading the publication,’ he told his friend Father Robert Murray, ‘for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.’