What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s wartime fellowship of friends and fellow students?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s wartime fellowship of friends and fellow students was the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, commonly abbreviated as the T.C.B.S. The group formed at King Edward’s School in Birmingham before the First World War.

Its members included Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson, and Geoffrey Bache Smith. They shared poetry, discussed literature, and encouraged one another’s creative ambitions. The society remained important to Tolkien’s memory even after the war disrupted the lives of its members.

The T.C.B.S. is sometimes confused with the Inklings, the later Oxford discussion group that included C.S. Lewis. The two groups were separated by time and setting. The T.C.B.S. belonged to Tolkien’s school years and early adulthood, while the Inklings met in Oxford during Tolkien’s mature academic career.