Charles Noad was born in 1947. He worked at
Imperial College, London as a computer programmer. A
Tolkien fan, he was involved in the work of
the Tolkien Society, which he helped to found, for over 50 years, making him its longest-standing member; he served as its bibliographer and photographer, and belonged to its London local group, the
Northfarthing Smial. The society described his essay "On the Construction of
The Silmarillion" as "critically important"; it was published in the 2000 scholarly collection ''
Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter. His friendship with Christopher Tolkien led to his proofreading several Middle-earth books including The History of Middle-earth''.
David Bratman described Noad's "On the Construction of
The Silmarillion" as a "fascinating and well-researched and -argued" essay on what
J. R. R. Tolkien would probably have done to that book, making it "more heterogeneous" than the volume edited by Christopher Tolkien and published a few months after Noad's essay.
John D. Rateliff called Noad "the first fellow Tolkien scholar I met". == Works ==