No, I’m not a Legolas fan boy. The reason I read this edition of The Lord of the Rings was because they had it at my local library.

‘What, you don’t have a copy yourself?’ I hear you ask in horror.

Of course I do. But – it is precious to me. This was the copy I read when I was back in secondary school, that I saved up my money to buy: the hardback edition with the fold out map at the back. I spent hours copying that map out, by hand, and the copy was no bad effort either: good enough to be stuck to my wall.

‘Why didn’t you just stick up the map in the book?’

What? And deface my copy of The Book? You jest – or are in the service of Mordor, where books are not appreciated. I would no more rip out the map at the back of The Two Towers (or The Fellowship of the Ring) than I would deface Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection. You might think a book is not the same as a picture, one being a vehicle for conveying a story, the other being, in itself, the colours and shapes on the wall. But books, as objects, are precious to me, things of reverence. They should be treated with the same respect that one treats a great painting – and this is particularly so for the books of life, those books that have changed your life. So, coming to re-read The Lord of the Rings, and needing to fit in the reading during tube journeys and in waiting rooms, meant that I would have to carry the books around with me, running the risk of damaging them. Hence, the trip to the local library, and why I ended up reading the edition of The Two Towers with Orlando Bloom on the front. Luckily, reading it meant that I did not have to look at the cover.

As to what was within the covers, well, you know, don’t you. Simply the second part of the greatest novel of the 20th century.