After over ten years of research into the settings in the Cotswold shires that Professor Tolkien turned from reality into fantasy, Steve Ponty explores the locations that serve as the true inspiration for the Shire in The Lord of the Rings.

By reversing the map of the Shire and looking at it back-to-front, Steve has identified the Cotswolds and many other parts of the Four Shires (Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick) comprising the Shire in the legendary story. He also unveils, by a process of allusion and elision, the origin of the place names we all recognise on the book's maps in both the Welsh and English languages.

Apart from the countless secrets of geography hidden in the epic story, there are references never revealed before this brand-new perspective, to personalities contemporary with Professor Tolkien's writings such that in many ways, The Lord of the Rings may be read as a parody of England in the 1930s and the war years.