Rhona was born in 1935, eldest child of William Beare who was professor of Latin at Bristol University and the author of Roman Stage which was translated into Italian and still sells steadily in Italy.

She was educated at Clifton High School for Girls and then read Classics at Girton College, Cambridge. She then studied at Exeter University, under W F Jackson Knight, for a PhD, which she missed out on at that time. She was to get her doctorate later in 1974.

Rhona first read The Hobbit whilst at school and The Lord of the Rings at Cambridge. In fact she read it, including the appendices, through three times straight. Whilst at Exeter she wrote to Tolkien and was lucky enough to receive a response (see The Letters of J R R Tolkien).

She became Assistant Lecturer in Classics at Westford College, University of London and then Lecturer in Classics at Newcastle University, New South Wales, Australia.

While Rhona was in Australia she wrote some articles on Tolkien and Charles Williams for Mythlore. She also translated Tolkien’s Songs for the Philologists and hunted out the tunes. She was particularly attracted to his time travel stories. She was invited to write a handbook on The Silmarillion but, unfortunately, this is no longer available and is, in any case, in need of revision.

She returned to Britain in 2000.

Julian grew up in Kent, joining the TS at the age of 15. While at school, he self-published A Dictionary of Quenya, and then continued his linguistic interests by being assistant editor and then editor of Quettar. He read Mathematics at Cambridge, where he was a founder member of the Cambridge Tolkien Society. He then in 1987 moved to Edinburgh for doctoral work, where he has remained ever since, and is now Director of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science. Sadly, the requirements of modern academic life leave no time for any real work in Tolkien studies, though he still runs the oldest email list devoted to Tolkienian linguistics.

Website: homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jcb/

Lives in London and lectures at Bath Spa University College. He is the author of (among other books) Defending Middle-earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, published in the UK by Floris Books (hardback) and HarperCollins (paperback) in 1997. It has just been republished as a paperback with a new Afterword in America by Houghton Mifflin.

Born in Derbyshire, Colin grew up in Long Eaton, Portsmouth and South Wales, before moving to the West Midlands. He read English and Philosophy at the University of Ulster, and at this time began writing and speaking about Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and the Inklings.

After an career in editing and journalism in London, interspersed with some teaching, he migrated to Leicester in 1983 to work with a small publisher, IVP, as a commissioning editor. In 2002 he started his own business, InWriting, devoted to writing, editorial services, and some book acquisition for publishers. At present he is President of the Leicester Writers' Club, a lively group of committed writers, largely of fiction. He has two grown-up children. Next year he's moving home and work to the Lake District.

His publications include The Inklings Handbook (with David Porter), Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Story of their Friendship, and A Field Guide to Narnia. Currently he's working on two new books.

Colin has appeared as a commentator on Tolkien on the Extended DVDs of The Two Towers and The Return of the King and as a commentator on C.S. Lewis on the recent PBS nationwide broadcast On the Question of God (on Lewis and Sigmund Freud) in the USA. He was also interviewed by Joan Bakewell on GMTV about his dual biography of Lewis and Tolkien.

A young German illustrator on the verge of professionalism. Illustrating Tolkien has been her passion ever since she read The Lord of the Rings for the first time in 1992. In recent years she has exhibited her Tolkien-inspired watercolours at Oxonmoot and meetings of the German Tolkien Society, as well as galleries in Germany. Some paintings are also part of the international exhibition "Images of the Middle-Earth". Born 1977, she studied Visual Communication at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, graduating in 2001, and Graphic Design at the Colchester Institute in Colchester, UK, where she completed her BA (Hons) degree in 2003 with creating an illustrated edition of the Old English epic poem Beowulf.

Web site: anke.edoras-art.de

Specialist in myth studies and comparative mythology; a professor at Maryland University, teacher, author and public speaker. Author of a range of books on myth and Tolkien, including Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World, Question of Time: JRR Tolkien's Road to Faerie and Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth (co-edited with Carl Hostetter).

Web site: www.mythus.com

Christopher Garbowski is associate professor at the Department of English at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland. His special interest is narrative art and values. He has written two books: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue Series (1996) and Recovery and Transcendence for the Contemporary Mythmaker: The Spiritual Dimension in the Works of JRR Tolkien (2000).

John Garth is the author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin Co, 2003), winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2004. He has delivered papers on Tolkien at conferences in Britain and abroad, was guest speaker at the Tolkien Society annual dinner in 2004, and talks about Tolkien in National Geographic's 2001 Beyond the Movie documentary and on the extended DVD edition of Peter Jackson's Return of the King. He is a member of the review panel of Vinyar Tengwar, which publishes Tolkien's posthumous papers on the invented languages of Middle-earth. He studied English language and literature at St Anne's College, Oxford, works as a newspaper sub-editor on the Evening Standard, and lives with his wife in London.

Subject to work commitments.

John Howe was born in Vancouver and grew up in British Columbia. He Studied at the Ecoles des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg. Lives in Switzerland as a freelance illustrator, with his wife who is also an illustrator. He read The Lord of the Rings while he was still at school, starting with The Two Towers because Fellowship was so difficult to get hold of from the library. He is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Mediaeval re-enactment, something that was key to his work on Peter Jackson's filming of The Lord of the Rings.

Web site: www.john-howe.com

Tim Kirk illustrated the 1975 J.R.R.Tolkien Calendar for Ballantine Books. He is a five time winner of the Hugo award for science fiction and fantasy art. From 1980 to 2001 he was employed as a designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, and was instrumental in the conception and realization of several major theme park projects, including the Disney-MGM Studios in Florida, and Tokyo DisneySea, which debuted in September 2001. In 2002 he, along with his brother and sister-in-law (also Disney veterans) founded Kirk Design Incorporated, specializing in museum, restaurant, retail and theme park work. Kirk Design’s latest project is the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, which opened in Seattle in June 2004.

Web site: www.kirkdesigninc.com

Subject to work commitments.

Artist known worldwide for his illustrations of many of Tolkien's books, including the 1992 Centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings. The last few years have seen him as one of the conceptual artists for the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Architectural renderer and renowned Tolkien artist. Has illustrated the recent edition of The Silmarillion as well as an impressive number of Tolkien Calendars including the 1992 Tolkien Centenary one. Was the guest speaker at the 2003 Tolkien Society Annual Dinner.

Web site: www.tednasmith.com

Well known and popular fantasy author with an interest in Tolkien. Author of the Winter of the World series. Was the guest speaker at the 1999 Tolkien Society Annual Dinner.

Web site: www.users.zetnet.co.uk/mike.scott.rohan

Notable Tolkien scholar and professor of philology. Author of The Road to Middle-earth and JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century. Has been the guest speaker at several Tolkien Society Annual Dinners, the most recent being 1991 where his talk was the inspiration for the Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees series of Peter Roe booklets published by the Tolkien Society.

Broadcaster and author. In conjunction with Michael Bakewell adapted The Lord of the Rings for BBC Radio 4's acclaimed dramatisation. Author of The Lord of the Rings: Official Movie Guide and The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy. Was the guest speaker at the 2002 Tolkien Society Annual Dinner.

Web site: www.briansibley.com

Amateur drama producer and scriptwriter. Writer and producer of a number of plays based on various of Tolkien's works, including The Hobbit for the 1989 Birmingham Centenary Celebrations, which with the permission of the publishers, was a charity production presented on several evenings out of doors at Sarehole Mill. Viv also adapted and produced Farmer Giles of Ham for the 2001 Tolkien Weekend.