In 1981, BBC Radio 4 produced a dramatisation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in 26 half-hour stereo instalments. The novel had previously been adapted as a 12-part BBC Radio adaptation in 1955 and 1956 (of which no recordings are known to have survived), and a 1979 production by The Mind's Eye for National Public Radio in the US.

Like the novel on which it is based, the radio series tells the story of an epic struggle between the Dark Lord Sauron of Mordor, the primary villain of the work, and an alliance of heroes who join forces to save the world from falling under his shadow.

Recording took place at BBC Broadcasting House over two months in 1980.^[2] One-and-a-half days was allotted for each of the 26 episodes to be rehearsed and recorded.^[11] Sibley recalls the recording sessions having "quite a lot of laughter, quite a few tears, and a number of frazzled tempers".^[2] Gandalf-actor Michael Hordern recalled the sessions as "a bit of a slog".^[12]

Elizabeth Parker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop produced the sound effects.^[13] The composer Stephen Oliver, who had previously scored the RSC's successful production of Nicholas Nickleby, scored the music, with over 100 cues through the original 26-episode serial.^[14] The series was directed by Jane Morgan and Penny Leicester. Morgan stated she was anxious to avoid sound effects that were "too literal", and wished to incorporate music in complex battle scenes.^[11]

*1.4–1.8 on Crickhollow, Fatty Bolger, the Old Forest, Barrow-wights and Tom Bombadil omitted^[15]

The serial was first broadcast from 8 March to 30 August 1981 on BBC Radio 4 on Sundays from 12 noon to 12:30pm; each episode was repeated on the following Wednesday from 10:30pm to 11:00pm.^[16] A soundtrack album featuring a re-recorded and in some cases expanded suite of Stephen Oliver's music was released in 1981.^[17]

The 26-part series was edited into 13 hour-long episodes broadcast from 17 July to 9 October 1982, restoring some dialogue originally cut for timing.^[16] Following the success of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy in the early 2000s, the BBC reissued its radio series in three sets (audiobooks) corresponding to the three original volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King). This version omitted the original episode divisions, and included new opening and closing monologues for the first two sets, and an opening monologue only for the last, written by Sibley and performed by Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins. The soundtrack with Stephen Oliver's music, digitally remastered, was included with The Return of the King set, with a demo of John Le Mesurier singing Bilbo's Last Song as a bonus track.^[18]

Sibley thought the casting of Ian Holm as Frodo "simply inspired", his performance "of unswerving determination, tempered always with humour and vulnerability."^[1] He felt that Hordern managed to "become" Gandalf, "by intuition or some other theatrical magic ... by turn wise, stern and compassionate, a force for good, a constant light in an ever-darkening storm."^[1] As for John Le Mesurier's Bilbo, the comic actor who had played Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army gave the part "a weary melancholy".^[1]

The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury sets out criteria for adapting a complex work like The Lord of the Rings. The adaptation, he writes, must not simply use characters and names to relabel some existing formula, or rewrite the story into a generic style; it must retain as much as possible of the original when translating the narrative into a drama; it must keep the presentation fresh, avoid repetition, and retain plausibility; and it must especially retain the coherent feeling of a Middle-earth under threat, along with the book's momentum, coherence, moral conviction, and subtlety. Rosebury states that a radio production is "fundamentally hampered" by not being able to "suggest the physical and cultural presence of Middle-earth",^[6] other than through the limited medium of sound effects. In his view, the few passages of narration in the production "give tantalising glimpses of [Tolkien's] breadth of vision which fades painfully as the studio-bound dialogues resume."^[6] He finds the dialogue well delivered by the actors, admiring especially Peter Woodthorpe's "fine Gollum", and the abridgement skilful though subtly flattening Tolkien's text "in the direction of an adventure story."^[6] The version's strength, Rosebury writes, is in its rather faithful and almost complete rendering of the book's events, though as in Ralph Bakshi's animated version and Peter Jackson's live-action version, without Tom Bombadil.^[6]

The Tolkien scholar Christina Scull thought it a "masterly adaptation", that stayed faithful to Tolkien's story, presented most of the characters "as he depicted them", and especially "caught the spirit of the books".^[16] She found the handling of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields with alliterative verse "a brilliant idea", and praised Gerard Murphy's narration.^[16] Comparing the production with Jackson's interpretation, she felt that her "happiness with the BBC production made [her] even less happy with Jackson than I might have been without it", disliking the films' additional material, violence, and "the weakening of almost all the characters".^[16] In her view, the BBC dramatisation presented "the characters I [met] in the book", whereas the film version did not.^[16]

Peter Woodthorpe (Gollum/Sméagol) and Michael Graham Cox (Boromir) had previously voiced the same roles in Bakshi's film in 1978.^[19] Ian Holm, who voiced Frodo Baggins in the radio serial, went on to play Bilbo Baggins in Jackson's film trilogy in the early 2000s.^[20]

The Lord of the Rings was dramatised for radio by Sibley and Michael Bakewell.^[21] The music was composed by Stephen Oliver.^[22] Radiophonic sound was provided by Elizabeth Parker. The series was produced and directed by Jane Morgan and Penny Leicester.

The cast for the production was:^[21]