ROBERT S. BLACKHAM is a member of the Birmingham Tolkien Strategy Group and vice chair of The Shire Country Park Friends, a park named to commemorate J.R.R. Tolkien s childhood connections with the area in Birmingham. The author gives talks and lectures about Tolkien in and around Birmingham and Oxford, and has made a large number of TV and Radio appearances in connection with this. He is the author of The Roots of Tolkien s Middle-Earth (Tempus, 2006); Tolkien s Birmingham (Mallorn, 2007); Tolkien s Oxford (The History Press, 2008); The Pitkin Guide to Tolkien (Pitkin, 2011); Tolkien and the Peril of War (The History Press, 2011).