95th Anniversary of Christopher Tolkien

November 21 marks the 95th anniversary of Christopher John Reuel Tolkien, the third and youngest son of J. R. R. Tolkien, the character of his “The Father Christmas Letters” and the editor of his literary heritage. Christopher was born on 1924 in Leeds where his father taught at the university. As a child, he heard through his father stories about the adventures of the brave little Bilbo which later formed the basis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s world-famous “The Hobbit” and, as a teenager, typewrote his father’s manuscripts and drew maps of Middle-earth... “As strange as it may seem, I grew up in the world he created,” confessed Christopher Tolkien many years later in his interview with “Le Monde.” “For me, the cities of ‘The Silmarillion’ are more real than Babylon.” Like J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher chose to pursue a career as a medieval philologist, but in 1975 he left his fellowship at New College, Oxford, moved with his second wife Baillie to France, and devoted himself entirely to editing unpublished works from his father’s colossal archive. The results of this titanic work are 25 books, including “Silmarillion”, “The Children of Húrin”, “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún”, “The Fall of Arthur”, “Beren and Lúthien”, which have already been published by the Astrolabe Publishing in Ukrainian translations by Kateryna Onishchuk and Olena O’Lear. Our publishing house sincerely congratulates Christopher Tolkien on his birthday and wishes him good health as well as a long and happy life!