Oxonmoot 2021

I have been wondering, failing any information from those two reliable biographers Carpenter and Garth, just how Tolkien’s personal effects: books, student notes, papers, drawings, and clothes, survived between his leaving Oxford for the army, and then reuniting with Edith and with his possessions after he came back to England. His younger brother Hilary had already gone into the army, and I assume he didn’t travel to Jane Neave’s home, to leave possessions there.  

I therefore conjectured a suitcase, perhaps the one which he took to Oxford when he went up, and which he would not need for the army, and filled it with fairly lightweight and very important items which Edith would look after for him. Having listed its likely contents, I began to compile a list of all the other items which we know survived the War, and are still extant today, and considered where they could have been stored.