John Garth

John Garth is a British journalist and author, known especially for his writing about J. R. R. Tolkien. He read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, and worked for many years as a newspaper journalist before turning to books, bringing a reporter's discipline and an eye for evidence to his research.

His first book, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, published in 2003, is a closely researched study of how the First World War shaped Tolkien's early imagination and the beginnings of his legendarium. It reconstructs the wartime experiences of Tolkien and the small circle of school friends known as the T.C.B.S., whose losses on the Western Front left a permanent mark on his work. The book won the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship and has influenced much Tolkien scholarship since.

Garth has continued to write and lecture widely on Tolkien, contributing to scholarly volumes, magazines, and exhibitions. His later book, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-earth, explores the real landscapes behind Tolkien's invented geography.

He is regarded as one of the leading independent scholars working on Tolkien's life and sources, valued for combining rigorous fact-checking with clear, engaging prose.