321 From a letter to P. Rorke, S.J. 

4 February 1971

[With reference to the Caverns of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings. ]

I was most pleased by your reference to the description of 'glittering caves'. No other critic, I think, has picked it out for special mention. It may interest you to know that the passage was based on the caves in Cheddar Gorge and was written just after I had revisited these in 1940 but was still coloured by my memory of them much earlier before they became so commercialized. I had been there during my honeymoon nearly thirty years before.