The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition EDITED BY HUMPHREY CARPenTER and CHRISTOPHER TOLKieN (HARPERCOLLINS, 720 PP, £30) tablet bookshop price £27 • tel 020 7799 4064

His biographer describes the undemonstrative and traditional Catholic belief of the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who died 50 years ago today.

The Borgias have done more than anyone for the Black Legend of papal corruption. They have everything: greed, sexual rapacity, murder and a clutch of papal children, including Lucrezia, wife of three husbands, alleged poisoner, lover of poets.

There is nothing like an imminent canonisation to focus the attention of publishers.

Ahead of an exhibition that will include some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most personal writings, his biographer explains that there is darkness as well as charm in these manuscripts

Among the less spectacular literary consequences of Hitler’s war was the wholesale move of the Oxford University Press’ London branch to Oxford. Its staff included Charles Williams, an editor in his mid fifties with an industrious literary bent and curious religious interests.