Tolkien, who was then hard at work writing "The Lord of the Rings", found their conversation with Campbell delightful. In a letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien compared Campbell to Trotter, a torture-crippled hobbit in his novel, who would be renamed Aragorn in later drafts. Tolkien described Campbell as follows, "Here is a scion of an Ulster prot. family resident in S. Africa, most of whom fought in both wars, who became a Catholic after sheltering the Carmelite fathers in Barcelona — in vain, they were caught & butchered, and R.C. nearly lost his life. But he got the Carmelite archives from the burning library and took them through the Red country. [...] However it is not possible to convey an impression of such a rare character, both a soldier and a poet, and a Christian convert. How unlike the Left – the 'corduroy panzers' who fled to America [...]