21 Celebs You Didn’t Know Were From Africa
3. J.R.R. TOLKIEN
The single most popular epic fantasy writer of all times, J. R. R. Tolkien’s fame had a huge revival after Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, followed by The Hobbit, another book in the author’s rich Middle Earth oeuvre.
Even before the movies, Tolkien was extremely popular among children and adults alike. The worlds he created are so magnificent in their scope and brilliant in the way they handle history, society and human fate, they are simply impossible to resist. Most people think of Tolkien as a British author, but he was actually born in South Africa. Tolkien’s father got a job at a British bank in Bloemfontein in what used to be Orange Free State and is now Free State Province, and that’s where Tolkien was born in 1892.
When he was three years old, his mother took him to England for a family visit. His father was supposed to join them later but he died of rheumatic fever. Left with no source of income, the mother took young Tolkien to live with his grandparents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Tolkien never went back to South Africa.
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