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Category Archives: Tolkien’s creative spirit
Goblin caves, ancient scripts and Tolkien’s gift for invention
Goblin caves at the North Pole! The Father Christmas letters penned by Tolkien tell us some surprising things about the Arctic. They borrow penguins from Antarctica and feature a polar bear who can speak, write and draw. The North Pole … Continue reading
Wetwang revisited
Part two, in which we wet our wonges Tolkien’s paper ‘Chaucer as a Philologist’ (1934) is an analysis of northern English dialect in the Reeve’s Tale, one of the Canterbury Tales. Tolkien argues that Geoffrey Chaucer displays a philological interest … Continue reading
Wetwang revisited
Part One, in which the vicar entertains I’m in the middle of copy-editing an upcoming edition of Tolkien’s work on Chaucer, edited with commentary by John Bowers and Peter Steffenson, for Oxford University Press. Tolkien on Chaucer (Opens in a … Continue reading
Posted in Places and inspiration, Tolkien’s creative spirit
Tagged Chaucer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle-earth, Philology, Place-names, Tolkien research, Tolkien's writing, Wetwang, Yorkshire
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An award on behalf of Tolkien, 50 years on
It’s not every day that you receive an award also given to the director-general of Syrian antiquities, the director of archaeology at Troy and the director of the Colosseum in Rome. But that day came for me on 3 September. … Continue reading
‘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
Tanks at Gondolin
Here’s an excerpt from my book Tolkien and the Great War to mark the centenary of Tolkien’s discharge on 9 December 1916 from military hospital, where he had begun writing his first ‘lost tale’ of Middle-earth, ‘The Fall of Gondolin’. … Continue reading
Bottling the essence of languages: Tolkien’s ‘A Secret Vice’
From sound aesthetic to Finnegans Wake, a new book explores Tolkien’s relationship to language. Here’s my review for the New Statesman. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages Ed. Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins HarperCollins (223pp, £16.99) Horsemen, barbaric yet noble, … Continue reading
Dragon scale: Why it’s impossible to size up Tolkien’s Middle-earth
A piece of fan art illustrating the relative size of Tolkien’s dragons raises a far more interesting issue than how big was Smaug or Glaurung or Ancalagon the Black. It’s an issue that should give pause for thought in any … Continue reading
Posted in Tolkien’s creative spirit
Tagged Art, Dragons, J.R.R. Tolkien, Pauline Baynes, Peter Jackson movies, Realism, Tolkien's writing
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Why World War One Is at the heart of Lord of the Rings
It’s sixty years since the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first volume of The Lord of The Rings. Why was he so inspired by the Great War—and a group of schoolfriends? War runs like iron ore through the bones of Tolkien’s … Continue reading
John Garth 