Tolkien spent his childhood in and around the Lickey Hills; he first moved here at the age of three, when his father died, and attended the King Edwards’ School, a secondary grammar in Birmingham.

The suburbs of Birmingham hardly seem a likely model for J R R Tolkien's Shire, in Middle Earth, but standing in a field on the edge of the Lickey Hills on Sunday, I caught a breath of that ...

Jill Harvey, of the Lickey Hills Society, says a ranger used a wheelbarrow to put a second fire out.