Robert Keith Inglis (9 March 1933 – 23 May 2021) was an Australian-British actor, playwright, journalist, and theatre critic best known for narrating the first unabridged audiobook editions of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Born in Australia, Inglis moved to England in 1955 and built a career on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre before Recorded Books approached him to narrate an unabridged Lord of the Rings in 1990, followed by The Hobbit in 1991. His recordings became among Recorded Books' best-selling titles and remained the only commercially available unabridged audio edition of The Hobbit for nearly three decades, until Andy Serkis's 2020 recording. AudioFile magazine praised Inglis's "rich sound and grave manner," and critic Laura Miller described his narration as feeling more read than performed, evoking the sensation of a favorite relative reading a beloved childhood book aloud. Inglis passed away in 2021, but his recordings remain widely available and are still cited by longtime Tolkien fans as the definitive, old-fashioned audio experience of Middle-earth.
Notable narrations: The Hobbit; The Lord of the Rings
No published audiobooks by this narrator yet.