<Ul> <Li> Battle of the Somme </Li> </Ul> <Li> Battle of the Somme </Li> <P> John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, FRSL (/ ˈtɒlkiːn /; 3 January 1892--2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high - fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion . </P> <P> He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo - Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959 . He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis--they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings . Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972 . </P>

Who wrote the hobbit and lord of the rings