J.r.r. tolkien children

00:00The actual beginning, though it's not really the beginning, but the actual flashpoint was, I remember very clearly, I can even, I took, I can still see the corner in my house in 20 Northmore Road where it happened.

00:11I got an enormous pile of exam papers there, and marking school examinations in the summertime is an enormous, very laborious and unfortunately also boring.

00:27And I remember picking up a paper and actually if I nearly gave an extra mark for it, an extra five marks actually, one page on this particular paper was left blank, glorious, nothing to read.

00:38So I scribbled on it, I can't think why, in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.

00:42I think that was eventually published in 1937.

00:46I now wanted to try my hand at writing a really stupendously long narrative and to see whether I had sufficient art, cunning or material to make a really long narrative which would hold the average reader right through.

01:06No, no, I wouldn't mind othe