Tolkien Gleanings #127.

* More details, and a nice banner, for the forthcoming Tom Shippey talk giving his latest thoughts on ‘Tolkien and Beowulf’. It turns out that the event is for university faculty and students only, but hopefully there will be a YouTube recording.

* “Tolkien’s fantasy as tapestry”, a talk by Alice Bernadac, curator of tapesteries, on the topic of the suite of giant wall-tapestries woven after Tolkien at Aubusson. The talk (billed as a “conference”) is at the Soreze Abbey School and is part of the current temporary exhibition ‘Image/Imaginary in the illustrated book, from Homer to Tolkien’ (runs until 8th October 2023), on show at the Cite Internationale de la Tapisserie d’ Aubusson.

* Free in the latest Omnes magazine, an interview in English with the founder of the Catholic Tolkien Association…

“The important thing with ATC is to have an environment where no one feels stupid for believing that Tolkien’s works have helped them in their faith. There are a lot of us whose faith has been helped by Tolkien’s works […] it has helped us in our faith and from there we talk, study, write articles… The question is to study him as a Catholic, which is what they have not allowed us to do, because they consider it a circumstantial thing.”

* A “coming soon” page for a book review? A bad habit to get into, I’d suggest. But the Anselm Society has a page for a review of the book A Well of Wonder: C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Inklings (2016), posted yesterday and with the review billed as “Coming shortly”.

* And finally, the UK’s coastal city of Hull now has a ‘Tolkien Triangle Trail’ with a basic map. The above is an Archive.org link, as the website is consistently “502 Bad Gateway” unavailable in my browser.