Short answers, pulled from the story.
Donald Swann (the 30th of September 1923 - the 23rd of March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer, and entertainer best known as one half of the comic duo Flanders and Swann, alongside Michael Flanders. He also set J. R. R. Tolkien's poems to music and is estimated to have written or set to music nearly 2,000 songs across his career.
Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father was a Russian doctor of English descent and his mother was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat; both were refugees from the Russian Revolution. His great-grandfather, Alfred Trout Swan, was a draper from Lincolnshire who emigrated to Russia in 1840.
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann first met at Westminster School in London, where they were fellow pupils. In July and August of 1940 they staged a revue together called Go To It.
Swann registered as a conscientious objector in 1942 as a Quaker and pacifist, and served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit, a Quaker relief organisation, in Egypt, Palestine, and Greece. After the war he returned to Oxford to read Russian and Modern Greek.
Yes. Swann composed The Road Goes Ever On, a song cycle setting poems by J. R. R. Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings. A 1967 recording featured Tolkien himself alongside Swann and baritone William Elvin.
Donald Swann was diagnosed with cancer in 1992 and died on the 23rd of March 1994 at Trinity Hospice in South London.