Tolkien Gleanings #15

* John Ahern has a short but stimulating new article musing on “The Forest and the Descendants of Saruman”…

It is easy to sentimentalize Tolkien’s trees. […] But there is another side to the story. […] Saruman may use the forests of Fangorn to fuel his machines, but for much longer than that Sauron used Mirkwood to gather his strength. On the whole, there are four forests in The Lord of the Rings and only one is unambiguously good.

* News of a talk at the 2023 Oxford Literary Festival, “The Great Tales Never End: in Memory of Christopher Tolkien”…

“The Bodleian’s Tolkien archivist Catherine McIlwaine, writer John Garth and academic Stuart Lee discuss the role of J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher, in promoting the works of his father and furthering understanding about them.”

* Worcester’s The Magic of Middle-earth exhibition closed in the late summer, but was then quietly trucked up to Lichfield in Staffordshire. Who knew? Not many, unless perhaps you were on Instagram or perusing the local newspaper. The Lichfield publicity seems to have not gone much further than that. I find the exhibition closed on 11th December 2022.

* A new interview, “For The Love of Tolkien and Lewis”. This has news of a forthcoming screen documentary…

“Joseph Loconte, PhD., is an author, Senior Fellow in Christianity and Culture at The King’s College, and the Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation. […] His most recent project is a documentary on Lewis and Tolkien, with an emphasis on the way that war shaped their friendship and writings. Tri-State Voice writer Blake Whitmer recently sat down to interview him about his work.”

* And finally, I see that in Spring 2022 Malvern claimed Tolkien with a rather poorly proof-read leaflet (e.g. “C.s lewis”) containing a mapped walking route along the top of the Malverns…

An article in Mallorn in 1998, “A Fiftieth Anniversary Walk (or There and Back Again, an academics day out)” discussed and re-traced the walk in question…

“the [walk in the] Malvern Hills in 1947 was the last they [Tolkien and Lewis] went on together.”

Garth (Tolkien’s Worlds) is less sure, and offers that it was “perhaps” their last walk together. But they were definitely there. The new leaflet also makes an un-referenced claim that the Malvern Hills inspired the…

“Ered Nimrais mountain range, known colloquially as the White Mountains” and that “In a rare admission, Tolkien acknowledged that these White Mountains were, indeed, based on The Malvern Hills.”

This seems unlikely, given the greatly differing elevation and reach. Again one consults Garth (Tolkien’s Worlds) to find that the source was a recollection of a verbal conversation. On this Garth suggests a mis-remembering… “perhaps based on a mis-hearing”. This seems quite likely to me. Tolkien spoke rapidly and also mumbled, and it was difficult to catch everything he said even if you were right next to him. But a mis-hearing of what? Well, The Weather Hills would be a far more apt comparison. That comparison has already been made in Mallorn in 1992 in the article “The Geology of the Northern Kingdom”. This also offers some clear geological parallels. Weathertop is at the southern end of the Weather Hills, and thus the Hereford Beacon and its hill-fort remains would have partly inspired Weathertop. Again, quite a plausible surmise. We also know that they could be seen from Tolkien’s brother’s farm in Evesham, across the (relatively flat) Worcestershire countryside.