J. R. R. Tolkien
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.
The Hobbit
On first publication in October 1937, "The Hobbit" was met with almost unanimously favourable reviews from publications both in the UK and the US, including "The Times", "Catholic World" and "New York Post". C. S. Lewis, friend of Tolkien (and later author of "The Chronicles of Narnia" between 1949 and 1954), writing in "The Times" reports: