Traversing the Bernese Oberland on a summer holiday had a profound effect on the 19-year-old author-to-be. Some 57 years later he wistfully remembered the regret at leaving the eternal snows of the Jungfrau and the sharp outline of the pyramid-shaped Silberhorn peak against the dark blue of the sky. They were “the Silvertine of my dreams,” he wrote, referencing one of the peaks that stood above the Dwarven city of Moria in The Lord of the Rings.