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.
Tolkien family
Baillie Tolkien (née Klass) is the second wife of Christopher Tolkien. She was born in Winnipeg on 10 December 1941 to Dr. Alan Klass and his wife Helen. Alan Klass (1907–2000) was a surgeon and a distinguished member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Baillie attended McGill University and the University of Manitoba from which Baillie received her B.A. in 1962. She received her M.A. from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1964. Her first husband was Brian Knapheis, a Rhodes Scholar from Winnipeg, to whom she was briefly married. While as Baillie Knapheis, she worked as a secretary, first to J.R.R. Tolkien and then to Isaiah Berlin. She married Christopher Tolkien on 18 September 1967. She has two children with Christopher. Their son Adam Reuel Tolkien was born in 1969, and their daughter Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien was born in 1971. After the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, his letters written to his children were edited by Baillie for publication. The contents of the book were released in a 1976 book titled "The Father Christmas Letters", in which Baillie is credited as the editor. In the 1976–77 exhibition of paintings held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and afterwards at the National Book League in London, Baillie contributed a short introduction to the catalogue.