Christopher Tolkien, son and literary executor of JRR Tolkien, has died at the age of 95.
Christopher was involved in the creation of The Lord of the Rings, notably drawing the maps in the back and also functioning as one of the first early readers through correspondence with his father while stationed in the RAF.
When Tolkien died, he gave Christopher complete control over his unpublished writings, to destroy or publish any of them in whole or part.
Christopher is responsible for bringing most of Tolkien's posthumous publications to light, including The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Children of Hurin, and the 12 volume 5,000 page History of Middle-earth
He was also the last surviving member of the Inklings, the literary group which include C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.
In what I believe is the last publicly available footage of him, here's a video from last year of him discussing his father painting the "Rivendell" watercolor in The Hobbit.
He's passed on west into the Undying Lands but will always be remembered for his part in preserving and safeguarding his father's legacy.
EDIT Some nice quotes from other sites:
Christopher was born in Leeds, United Kingdom, on 21 November 1924. After a childhood in Oxford, he joined the RAF during the Second World War and was stationed to South Africa. After the war, he finished his studies and became a lecturer in Old and Middle English as well as Old Icelandic at the University of Oxford. After his father’s death in 1973, he became the literary executor of the Tolkien Estate and went on to edit and publish his father’s unpublished material starting with The Silmarillion in 1977 and ending with The Fall of Gondolin in 2018.
Christopher was the third child and youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, who became his father’s literary executor in 1973 and during a remarkable period of 47 years edited or oversaw the publication of 24 editions of his father’s works, many of which were international bestsellers.
Christopher was an editor from the age of 5, catching inconsistencies in his father’s bedtime tales, and was promised tuppence by his father for every mistake he noticed in The Hobbit. As a young man he was typing up manuscripts and drawing maps of Middle-earth and around the time he was commissioned an officer in the RAF in 1945, his father was already calling him ‘my chief critic and collaborator’. Following Tolkien’s death in 1973 Christopher carried out his father’s wishes by completing The Silmarillion, the book that his father had worked on his entire life. The Silmarillion was an international bestseller, selling more than 1 million copies in the UK.
Appointed by his father as literary executor, Christopher Tolkien left Oxford in 1975, moving to France to edit Tolkien’s massive legendarium. Christopher found himself confronted with 70 boxes of unpublished work. Much of the archive concerned the history of Middle-earth, and the notes contained a broader picture of the world only hinted at in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had intended to bring that picture to light, but he died before completing a final, coherent version. Christopher took it upon himself to edit that book, which was published in 1977 as The Silmarillion. He then turned to another project drawn from his father’s papers, then another – ultimately publishing poetry, academic works, fiction, and the monumental 12-volume History of Middle-earth.