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Author Archives: John Garth
Toad to Tode
I’ve posted this on social media already but I’m going to put it here too because, well, I like it. Writing about Tolkien’s unfinished Númenor time-travel novel The Lost Road, I almost inevitably mistype it as “The Lost Toad”. That … Continue reading
Posted in John Garth’s writing
Tagged Kenneth Grahame, Mr Toad, The Mewlips, Tolkien's life, Wind in the Willows
6 Comments
Making an ass of yourself, with Geoffrey Bache Smith
I’ve just returned from the first-ever conference focusing on Geoffrey Bache Smith, his poetry, and his influence on his great friend, Tolkien. In a previous post, I spotlighted an under-appreciated aspect of Smith: his sense of humour. In this new … Continue reading
Oxford and the Olympics
[This was published in Oxford Today, the university’s alumni magazine, ahead of the 2012 London Olympics. The most dated things about it are the reference to a certain Mayor of London by the name of Boris, and Oxford Today itself, … Continue reading
How I’ve helped to craft a Dickensian dystopia
An unexpected delight of the past year has been editing Kid: A History of the Future by Sebastian De Souza, better known as an actor in The Great, Normal People, The Borgias and Skins. The job went a long way … Continue reading
The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth
‘Magnificent. The commentary is great, really thoroughly researched; the pictures are stunning’ — Tom Shippey, author of The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century From world-renowned Tolkien expert John Garth comes the authoritative exploration of the … Continue reading
Ursula Le Guin, the language of Earthsea, and Tolkien
A tribute embedded in A Wizard of Earthsea? I used this question to introduce a social media post yesterday. Is should have waited until today, because this turns out to be the anniversary of Ursula Le Guin’s passing, a … Continue reading
Posted in Research tangents
Tagged Earthsea, Invented language, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin
28 Comments
‘He lets us walk the road as JRRT walked it’: Neil Gaiman’s tribute to Christopher Tolkien
Today Christopher Tolkien, who died in January after a short illness, would have been 96. He is sorely missed, though it is a delight and consolation to know that at least one further volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings, sanctioned by … Continue reading
Tolkien’s last friend in Oxford when the world went to war
‘Not a single man I know is up except Cullis,’ Tolkien lamented at the start of his final year as an Oxford student. It was 1914, war had just broken out, and their friends had left in droves to enlist … Continue reading
John Garth 