JRR Tolkien has had some unexpected admirers – Joni Mitchell, Iris Murdoch, Terry Pratchett and WH Auden – and to their number is now added Niall Ferguson, the clever economic historian. He took part in a recent episode of Great Lives, the BBC Radio 4 series hosted by Matthew Parris on individuals who deserve to be called great, to put the case for Tolkien, supplemented by a feisty article for the Sunday Telegraph. He loved Tolkien’s books as a boy; as a father he read them to his children. More unexpectedly, he attributes his own political conservatism to Tolkien and wonders that Tolkien’s liberal admirers – notably contemporary Silicon Valley entrepreneurs – seem oblivious to his politics.