I’ve finished rereading “The Lord of the Rings,” an activity I separated into four distinct chunks. It was as always a very pleasant experience. I was pleased to note that the blowing of the horns of Rohan outside Minas Tirith retains its power to thrill...
It annoys me when authors invent an olde-worlde society in which all the characters seem basically to be modern people with a greater tolerance for violence and a capacity for magic. But then I am reminded, when writing pseudo-medieval stories or reading those written by others,...
Most people in Britain today who are even half-literate will have heard of CS Lewis, and a large proportion will have read one or more of his books, or had it read to them. When you think about it, this is quite impressive for someone...
I promised to come back to the theme of servants in literature. (The patchiness of my reading will doubtless be very obvious.) This is my investigation on whether a servant can be a hero. Let’s make a list of types. Traditional servants. These, going back (I believe)...
As a dyed-in-the-wool Tolkien fan, I have read the Silmarillion, which covers arguably the whole history of Middle-Earth. It doesn’t just tell us the First Age legend of Beren and Luthien, and the Second Age drama of Numenor’s downfall. It also contains a delightful section...