Yeah, this author is off on a few points, sometimes grossly so. Also: > a land of enchantment and possibility and freedom, with a powerful and complex mytholog

Yeah, this author is off on a few points, sometimes grossly so. Also: > a land of enchantment and possibility and freedom, with a powerful and complex mythology that would bear comparison with those of any other country. No, they wouldn't bare comparison with just any other country. Tolkien was writing about his own country, which was England. The English countryside and culture is unique. The Shire, its jokes, its traditions, its lore, is just so obviously an adaption of the early 20th century English-countryside. Sure, there are some vague similarities between other Western countries, but it is so unmistakably English, that trying to make a feel-good statement like this at the end seems horribly forced.