At King Edward's School, Ronald was taught classics, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. He had great linguistic talent, and after studying old Welsh and Finnish he started to invent his own "Elvish" language.

1914 saw the outbreak of the First World War and Ronald took up his commission as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Before embarking for France in June 1916, he married his childhood sweetheart Edith Bratt. He and Edith had four children and it was for them that he first told the tale of The Hobbit, published in 1937. The Hobbit proved to be successful but it was not until 1954 that the first volume of his great masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, was published.

After retirement Ronald and Edith moved to Bournemouth, but when Edith died in 1971, Ronald returned to Oxford, and died there after a brief illness on 2 September 1973.