Tolkien 'caught trench fever' before writing The Hobbit

Service records have revealed that The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit might never have been written had author JRR Tolkien not fallen ill with “trench fever” during the Battle of the Somme, according to the Times.

Tolkien's recently discovered records reveal that he was invalided out of the front line. It came just days before a German offensive that claimed the lives of many of his comrades in October 1916, the newspaper reported.

His regiment, the Lancashire Fusiliers, was all but wiped out when the Germans launched a mortar attack, killing 38 soldiers, wounding, 166 with 63 recorded missing.

The 24-year-old Tolkien could well have been among the casualties, but instead, he recovered and went on to write The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.