Articles

Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War

When J.R.R. Tolkien arrived at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1911, there was scant sign that he was anything more than a gifted young man in pursuit of a degree amid a host of sociable distractions. By the time he left in 1915, the world had gone to war and he had begun the invention of Middle-earth. This is the definitive story of Tolkien's life as an Oxford undergraduate. Read more...

 

 

Michael Cox and The Meaning of Night

Michael Cox, whose splendid neo-Victorian thriller The Meaning of Night I reviewed for the Evening Standard, had previously copy-edited my Tolkien and the Great War. Just as he was starting work on my final typescript in June 2003, Michael (pictured by Jerry Bauer) had to go into hospital for a serious operation. All I knew was that he had some kind of cancer. Read more...

 

Tolkien’s gift

First published in the Evening Standard to mark the premiere of Peter Jackson's The Return of the King and the final of the BBC's Big Read, in which The Lord of the Rings was named Britain's best-loved book.

The Lord of the Rings must be one of the most comprehensively dismissed books ever written. Critics have queued up since its publication to denounce it. But J.R.R. Tolkien’s story has outlived one generation of critics, and will certainly outlive another. Like Homer’s Odyssey, it is for all time. Why? Because it bestrides the chasm between the ancient world and ourselves. His Middle-earth and the modern world are twins, born at the same time, in the First World War. Read more...

 

Tolkien fantasy was born in the trenches

In an article originally published in the Evening Standard just after the premiere of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, here I sketch some of the ideas underlying Tolkien and the Great War, was which I was then writing. Read more...

 

 

Review: Smith of Wootton Major by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Verlyn Flieger

When Tolkien set about writing an introduction to one of George MacDonald's fairy-tales, he quickly realised two things: he didn’t much like MacDonald’s moral allegory, and he would rather make his points about fairy-tales by creating one himself. He never finished the introduction he had been asked to write. Instead, we have Smith of Wootton Major: a counter-story to cure us of the notion that fairy-tales are only for children. Read more...

 

Links to further articles can be found here.