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Bill Oram: One reason is that Colin has chosen to use The Hobbit as proof text, and however superior a kid's book that is, it's a kid's book and written very slightly down for its audience. I think the instances of "suddenly" drop off in the Lord of the Rings proper, even the opening transitional hobbit chapters. And I think Tolkien's ear for sentence rhythm is very strong in the larger book. Me: Here I feel I must pull myself up to my full three-inch height and say (as a writer of children's books myself) that it's a very good height to be! I don't think one can assume that Tolkien would have felt it was all right to 'let himself go' stylistically simply because he was writing for children. (On the contrary, it's a commonplace amongst children's writers that 'adult' novelists are often severely under-edited, being allowed all kinds of self-indulgent irrelevancies in narrative and description that would not pass muster within a children's book.) Of course, Tolkien *may* have felt that sloppy writing was good enough for children - many people seem to - but, as I say, I don't think we can assume this. It's more plausible, I suggest, to regard *The Hobbit* as his master-piece in the craftsmanly sense, and *LotR* as his masterpiece in the demotic. Now I will climb off this particular hobby-horse, which seems to have wandered into field of off-topic thistles. Charlie