Critics are already raving about it. "A landmark in cinema, an awesome feat of imagination and daring," gushed Christopher Tookey in the Daily Mail. "Here is landscape photography of a grandeur and emotional resonance that we haven't witnessed in the cinema since John Ford revolutionised the Western."

York audiences will have to wait until next Wednesday to see the The Fellowship Of The Ring, the epic first part of JRR Tolkien's fantasy The Lord Of The Rings.

But all the signs are that it will be a feast for the senses. Judging by the few clips I've seen, Tookey isn't wrong about the way the landscape of Tolkien's Middle Earth is brought to life. And with that landscape playing such a major part in Tolkien's masterpiece - as anyone who has read the books will acknowledge - that's a big step in the right direction.

The film - the first of three, all of which have already been completed, at a total cost rumoured to be upwards of £190 million - looks set to be a smash hit, possibly dwarfing even the staggering success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The timing could hardly be better. Not only has the success of Harry whetted filmgoer's appetite for big-budget, quality fantasy - in the new age of uncertainty that has been ushered in post-September 11, the signs are we are all eager for a bit of escapist entertainment.

How it all started...

Tolkien the man developed a famous dislike for the modern world. According to Michael White, whose book Tolkien, A Biography is published this week, he was out of step with the 20th century. "Tolkien perceived the onward surge of technological progress as destructive and he had a deep distaste for many of the trappings of modern living," says White. "The Lord Of The Rings is a bit of a lecture against the 20th century."

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien - known to friends as Ronald - was born in South Africa, where his parents had emigrated from Birmingham, on January 3, 1892.

He was only four when his workaholic father Arthur died from a haemorrhage. His mother Mabel decided to return home to Britain and settled in the centre of Birmingham with her two sons Ronald and Hilary. When Tolkien was 12 his mother also died from diabetes, aged 34 - a loss that pushed him into a deep depression, according to White. The brothers were brought up by relatives.

"There was a new dark thread running through Tolkien's personality," White explains. "Losing both parents in quick succession made Tolkien feel as though nothing was permanent.

"In The Lord of the Rings, victories are also defeats. They are bitter-sweet. Everyone is impermanent and the book has a sort of sadness about it."

Life improved for Tolkien after he won a place at Oxford University. He was awarded a First Class degree in English Language and Literature and married his sweetheart, Edith Bratt.

At the end of the First World War he became an academic, eventually becoming Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

There, surrounded by the company of like-minded souls such as Narnia creator CS Lewis, he began working on The Hobbit. He was marking exam papers when by chance he found a blank page in a candidate's answer book. Doodling in the space, he wrote the sentence: "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit."

The Hobbit was published in 1937. Such was its success Tolkien was asked to write a sequel.

The author spent 12 years penning what became The Lord Of The Rings. The book met with critical acclaim but it was not at first a huge success, only finding mass appeal in the mid-1960s.

Tolkien and his wife had four children. He died in 1973 at 81.

"He knew his great work had been a huge success," said White. "And he appreciated the fact that people really liked it."

But is Tolkien more than that? Some have read an anti-war, anti-totalitarian message into The Lord Of The Rings - one possibly inspired by the cataclysmic events of the first half of the 20th Century.

Tolkien fan Adrian Lacy - who first read The Lord Of The Rings at the age of nine and says he has probably read it another 14 times in the 22 years since - says that may be reading too much into it.

"In a sense I think what he was saying is you have got to fight (for what you believe), but it is great to be able to have a lasting peace afterwards," the 31-year-old Yorkshire Water engineer says.

What has always struck me about the books is what a perfect representation of traditional, slightly conservative-with a small 'c' England The Shire - home of the hobbits in Lord Of The Rings and the setting for the opening of the novels - is. It could almost be the Vale of York; a sheltered haven of contentedness and small local grumblings, whose fortunate population are blissfully unaware of the real dangers, evil and strife that exist beyond the confines of their world.

The way a small band of inhabitants from this sheltered corner is rudely introduced to the big, bad, real world outside has always seemed to me a cry from the heart for Daily Mail-reading Middle England to wake up from its complacency. Or maybe it was just Tolkien, sickened by the barbarousness of the 20 century, yearning for the certainties of a lost England that possible never existed anyway.

Adrian Lacy agrees that The Shire is a perfect representation of rural England. "It is just like a rural backwater," he agrees. "It is difficult to imagine the hobbits at times. They talk about going home after a day on the farm, and having a pint of beer at the local, and it is easy to forget they are only three feet tall!" He agrees, too, that the people of The Shire are very sheltered. "They don't know about the dangers that lie outside, or that there are people keeping The Shire safe for them," he admits.

What Adrian loves most about the books is the meticulous detail that Tolkien put into his imagined world - that, and the depth of characterisation. The Oxford Professor of Anglo-Saxon spent years, before writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, planning out a detailed history of his Middle Earth, complete with the various languages spoken by its different peoples, Adrian points out. And the characters themselves are so real it is like meeting real people, he says.

He, like many fans, did have some worries when he first heard the books were to be filmed. The Lord of the Rings has long been held to be virtually unfilmable. But, having watched clips from the film and stills of the leading characters on the Internet, he believes the film-makers have pulled it off.

"The scenery looks fantastic," he says. "I hope I'm not disappointed. I don't think I will be."

Updated: 10:11 Friday, December 14, 2001