Tolkien

Friday

Damian Thompson

From the Bible to Tolkien: the risks & rewards of collecting rare books

27 min listen

The Bible is widely said to be the most published book of all time. Despite this, many older versions of the Bible are still sought after. This is because, as Tom Ayling tells Damian Thompson on this episode of Holy Smoke, there is a great deal of diversity amongst the editions precisely because it has been so widely published. Tom, a young antiquarian bookseller who set up his own business, joins the podcast to talk about the risks and rewards behind collecting rare books. Tom explains why, for him, books are ‘most than just a text’; takes us through the various religious books in his collection, from old editions of the Holy Bible to the Book of Common Prayer; and reveals some of the more amusing mistakes he has come across. For more from Tom, go to: www.tomwayling.co.

Friday

Ameer Kotecha

The Lord of the Rings gave me my moral compass

In a recent diary for The Spectator, the editor noted that many of the world’s leading tech companies have names inspired by The Lord of the Rings: Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Mithril; Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has a curious hold on the minds of Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters,’ he wrote. Well, they’re not the only ones. If I had founded a company I probably would have called it Anduril too. While less odd teenagers spent their money on CDs or football boots, I used to have a life-sized replica of the Elvish sword hanging above my bed. I, like the tech bros, was a LOTR obsessive. A super fan. I still am. Tolkien was a genius and I have read his books many times over.

Thursday

Michael Gove

Is Simon Heffer a security threat?

Airport security was much on my mind last Friday afternoon. I had been due to fly from Heathrow to Zurich that morning, but the substation fire meant a switch to an afternoon departure from London City Airport. City is a business-oriented operation in every respect and one of its many efficient features is a baggage-checking regime that does not require you to separate your 100ml bottles of shampoo and shaving foam into a plastic ziplock bag. The X-ray machine and associated sensors are supposed to penetrate your luggage and identify anything dangerous with scientific precision. My heart sank when my carry-on bag was shunted off the conveyor belt and a security operative summoned me over to explain myself.

Thursday

The Spectator

This month in culture: August 2024

From our US edition

The Instigators In theaters August 2, Apple TV+ August 9 Boston crime movies are back! Starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck — and produced by Ben Affleck, of course — The Instigators is a heist comedy-thriller about a robbery that goes wrong, causing Damon’s therapist to get dragged along for the ride. Affleck/Damon productions have consistently been solid — from the ultimate Boston crime movie The Town to last year’s Jordan 1 sneaker-origin story Air — and this is directed by one of the best working action directors around, Doug Liman, who was responsible for The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Edge of Tomorrow and (the underrated) American Made.

culture

Monday

Alexander Larman

Why does a new Tolkien biography remain elusive?

From our US edition

Last year’s big-budget, much talked-about television series, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, had a somewhat unlikely figure as its presiding genius. For one thing, he has been dead half a century this year, and for another, he was a mild-mannered Oxford don with a particular scholarly interest in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature. His reputation rests on four novels published during his lifetime, which have not only been bestsellers since their publications in 1937, 1954 and 1955, but continue to attract millions of readers, who are unusually ardent in their appreciation.

tolkien

Wednesday

Harry Mount

Fellowship of the Lamb: how we’re saving Tolkien’s pub

I’ve just bought Tolkien’s pub in Oxford. Well, to be more precise, I and more than 300 fellow drinkers have bought the Lamb and Flag, the 400-year-old Oxford pub where the Inklings group of writers – including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis – drank. Like so many pubs across the country, the Lamb and Flag closed, in January last year, thanks to the pandemic trading slump. Across the road, the Eagle and Child pub also closed, in 2020, because of Covid. Tolkien and Lewis drank there, too – they called it ‘the Bird and Baby’. It remains shut. What rare survival stories these two pubs are – or were. The Eagle and Child, owned by St John’s College, opened in 1650.

Thursday

James Walton

Will you be able to get through the ponderous aphorisms without giggling? The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reviewed

Amazon’s much-heralded Tolkien prequel The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power began by answering a question that has puzzled humankind – and possibly elves – these many millennia. Why is it that a ship floats and a stone doesn’t? The reason apparently is because ‘a stone sees only downward’, whereas a ship has ‘her gaze fixed upon the light that guides her’. And this, I’m afraid, set the tone for much of the dialogue that followed in the two episodes released so far – as, to their credit, the characters managed to exchange an endless series of ponderous aphorisms without giggling.

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

A Hobbit-sized exhibition about Tolkien as pipe-smoker and parent

From our US edition

To no one’s surprise, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition was a huge success when it opened last October at the Bodleian in Oxford, the library where J.R.R. spent so much of his time. Had tickets been on sale, Tolkein would have been be a sell-out, but the Bodleian had made it free. The visitors book was peppered with observations such as: ‘It made me cry with joy… sensationally splendid.’ There’s also a less hyperbolic view, in a childish hand: ‘It was interesting to see how he made The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.’ Tolkien, Maker of Middle-Earth is now at the Morgan Library, New York City. It is rather a small show, almost Hobbit-sized.

tolkien