The movie series based on The Lord of the Rings brought to new prominence the author of the books on which it is based, J. R. R. Tolkien.  Tolkien was many things: a university professor, a medieval scholar, a writer of fantasy, and a Christian.  During the First World War, young Tolkien served in the trenches with the British army, and that experience is said to have had a major impact on his fiction.  During World War Two, while Britain struggled against the Axis powers, Tolkien, no longer young, wrote these words to his son Christopher:

"I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of …