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Roverandom

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About this listen

Tolkien’s acclaimed modern classic ‘fairie’ tale, read by Derek Jacobi.

While on holiday in 1925, four-year-old Michael Tolkien lost his beloved toy dog on the beach at Filey in Yorkshire. To console him, his father, J.R.R.Tolkien, improvised a story about Rover, a real dog who is magically transformed into a toy and is forced to seek out the wizard who wronged him in order to be returned to normal.

This charming tale, peopled by a sand-sorcerer and a terrible dragon, by the king of the sea and the Man-in-the-Moon, went through several drafts over the years. Now, many years on, the adventures of Rover – or, for reasons that become clear in the story, ‘Roverandom’ – are performed by Sir Derek Jacobi.

©1998 The J.R.R. Tolkien Copyright Trust; (P)1998 HarperCollins UK Action & Adventure Animals Dragons & Mythical Creatures Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Humorous Magic Classics Magic Users Mythology Comedy

Critic reviews

‘This is an old-fashioned story, yet it still speaks freshly today… would leap to life when read aloud to a child’
Independent

‘Lord of the Rings buffs will enjoy picking out bits of Nordic mythology and will relish Tolkien’s fabulous sense of landscape’
The Times
All stars
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one of my favourite stories. so beautifully written as always by Tolkien. I will be reading this over and over again to my children and grandchildren for years to come.

such a beautiful 'tail' (of the doggy sorts)

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Listening to these faerie tales by Tolkien is great - this one, given the context in which it was written, is particularly special and full of wonderful scenes of brilliant imagination.

Roverandom

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