As The Hobbit film is released this week, Graham Young looks at a new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, the famous author who grew up in Birmingham.

Colin Duriez was a teenager at King Charles I Grammar School and visiting a local Kidderminster bookshop in the 1960s when he saw a book called The Hobbit.

It was a life-changing moment in much the same way that future Oscar-winning film director Peter Jackson was just 17 when he bought a copy of The Lord of the Rings to read on a 12-hour railway journey from Wellington to Auckland in 1978.

Now aged 65, Colin is marking the 75th anniversary of the publication of the original children's novel he adored with his own biography of the man behind the legend of Middle-earth, JRR Tolkien.

Next year will also see the publication of his biography of Tolkien's great friend CS Lewis, which he was writing concurrently.

"We wanted the Tolkien book to coincide with the release of The Hobbit film." says Colin.

"Next year it will be the 50th anniversary of the death of CS Lewis on the day that JFK was assassinated.

"It just seemed to be the right time to do them in that order."

To write the 240-page Tolkien paperback, Colin talked to fans and leading scholars alike, tapping into the extraordinary knowledge of author's fantasy worlds of landscape and language.

"Tolkien was a ground breaking author," he says.

"Writing fantasy for adults was immensely intuitive and people like Terry Pratchett would say that if it hadn't been for Tolkien, they wouldn't have been able to do what they did.

"He had a huge impact and the way that he is still loved around the world is stunning.

"When you look back, others who were trying to be original at the time were, in fact, rather boring."

During his research, Colin toured the country, following in Tolkien's footsteps from Bournemouth to Oxford and Yorkshire.

But, even though he was in South Africa and moved to this country when he was three, Colin believes that Tolkien would still have called himself first, and foremost, "a Brummie".

"It's certainly where he grew up because the family had to move into the country, then his mother had to make sure he got a good education," he says.

To that end, when Colin visited south Birmingham for his research at the various sites associated with Tolkien, he couldn't believe how hard it was to find the entrance to Moseley Bog.

Or to know when Sarehole Mill - currently under restoration for reopening as a working mill next Easter - might be open, not least because one of the founding fathers of the industrial revolution, Matthew Boulton, had used the mill for industrial purposes.

Tolkien lived in between Moseley Bog and Sarehole Mill at Gracewell on the Wake Green Road from the summer of 1896 to before the end of September 1900.

The family then moved to 214, Alcester Road, Moseley, for a brief time before moving again to 86, Westfield Road, Kings Heath in late 1900 or early 1901.

"The people of Birmingham should have a very positive view of how they could draw tourists in to the many places associated with their famous writer," says Colin.

"There could be a big exhibition, a museum and resources for people to study him."

People, in fact, just like Colin.

Despite his knowledge, the one thing you won't find him doing is taking part in a pub quiz on his favourite author.

"I haven't read The Lord of the Rings 20, 30 or 40 times like some people," he admits.

"But I've read it a handful of times and listened to the BBC dramatisation of it a number of times and I carry it about in my head.

"When you are dealing with such complex people as Tolkien and Lewis, you just have to pluck up the courage to do these biographies."

Where did that courage come from?

"From doing a lot of background research and talking to people who are very knowledgeable," he says.

"I used to air ideas so that if I was wrong people could pick me up about it.

"I was also driven because of the need for these books at this particular time, otherwise there would be no point writing them.

"When you are younger you have more confidence, as you get older you get a bit more scared of doing things but you build on your experience and how people respond to what you have written before.

"By doing a little bit at a time, you can end up doing a lot.

"I'd be disappointed if they (publishers Lion Hudson) only sold two or three thousand copies, ecstatic if we could reach 15,000.

"You can reach those targets if you can get published by one of the big names because of their publicity machines, but so far I haven't been asked!"

Colin's home is somewhere that Tolkien himself would have appreciated.

From a garden office, on the outskirts of Keswick, Colin has an "inspiring" view of England's fourth highest mountain, Skiddaw (931m).

It's from here that he writes "complex beginnings to chapters" long hand and "the rest on a MAC computer after I got fed up with PCs".

The key to understanding Tolkien, though, was to follow his path.

"Traipsing round the country", as Colin puts it, meant that he "got quite a feeling for the person, rather than someone who was almost imaginary".

"It just gave me a different perspective.

"I gave a talk to children in the Isle of Man recently and told them how much their local place names would have inspired him to write stories about those.

"Parts of The Lord of the Rings could certainly have been filmed in the Lake District.

"But the amazing thing about Sarehole Mill is that it's also a relic of the industrial revolution and Tolkien thought a lot about that.

"That this area was one of the key places in the rise of the industrial revolution is amazing.

"Tolkien was a very complex character - very different to CS Lewis - and I've very much warmed to him.

"He had a lot of qualities which were very attractive. I would have felt very privileged if I could have had so much as a conversation with him even though as he got older, notoriously, he became more unclear in his speech."

In the book, Colin notes Tolkien's struggle with his celebrity status, which was as nothing with how he might have been feted today on the back of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which grossed $3 billion a decade ago.

Never mind the renewed sense of anticipation with regards to The Hobbit trilogy which begins in cinemas this week.

"I think he would have hated the films, which is no reflection on their quality," says Colin.

"He liked drama and he liked characters in your mind. What makes the books still relevant, is that he was interested in the pace of industrial and technological change and its impact on the world.

"After Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he was concerned about lots of things happening and just wanted a quiet, hobbit-like existence of someone who had grown up in the Shire."

In terms of The Lord of the Rings, becoming films, Colin says: "The Hobbit was written for children and The Lord of the Rings more for adults... Peter Jackson is returning the story to adults.

"It will be interesting to see what people make of The Hobbit if they read it after The Lord of the Rings.

"When I read The Hobbit, I was very impressed with the richness of it as a children's story.

"The films are a very different medium and Peter Jackson is a brilliant storyteller.

"I might get annoyed at various plot changes, but I also get so caught up in the world of the films that I don't notice the changes so much because I'm enjoying the films.

"In The Hobbit, the 'Battle of the Five Armies' only lasts a few pages, but now they are making three films I can imagine that will be rather long!"

Colin's own family originally moved from northern France to join the lace makers of Nottingham and he himself was born in Derbyshire.

Having grown closer to Tolkien during his research, is there a burning question that Colin still has unanswered about the 'medievalist who brought in sources from long ago'?

"I would like to ask him about how he understood the ring of power as a machine, because it was a 'from of machine created by Sauron', and to go right into the question of power and technology and how you handle it.

"Similarly, JK Rowling uses technology as a modern form of magic.

"Hogwarts was all about learning how you handle magic, like technology, so that it's a force for good, rather than bad.

"I am sure Tolkien thought a lot about this."

As indeed, did Steve Jobs, who dreamed up the Apple computer upon which the book was written.

* J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend by Colin Duriez (Lion Hudson, s8.99)