The children were playing in the rock pools when their father started what would become the most widely read work of fiction of the 20th century.
The details are specific enough to feel true, which is how the best biographical facts usually present themselves. The Tolkien family was on summer holiday in Sidmouth, on the Devon coast. The book that would eventually sell more than 150 million copies and be voted the greatest novel of the 20th century by readers in poll after poll began, in some sense, beside a seaside rock pool.
The faith that
