Fer Shire

Tolkein recalling how he came to write The Hobbit's opening line.  screen shot

The third, and I believe final, installment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit series, this one called The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, will journey to theaters in December. In an attempt to get a jump on the coverage (too late?), I hereby present a list of interesting things about the novels' author, JRR Tolkein (1892-1973): http://mentalfloss.com/article/25813/10-things-you-should-know-about-jrr-tolkien
   (the following to be read in upper-crust British accent, chaps, as this is Tolkein speaking) "The actual beginning, though it is not really the beginning, but the actual flashpoint was, I remember very clearly, I came, I took ~ I can still see the corner in my house in 20 North [mumble] Road, where it happened ~ I got an enormous pile of exam papers there, and eh ... marking school examination in the summertime is an enormous, um, very laborious, and unfortunately also boring. And I remember picking up a paper and actually finding ~ I nearly gave it an extra mark for it ~ an extra five marks, actually ~ one page on this particular paper was left blank. Glorious! Nothing to read, so I scribbled on it, I can't think why, 'In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.' ... I think that was eventually published in 1937" (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-4vMEiQ_U#t=21