Tolkien Gleanings #128.

* The hardcover of the new The Hobbit: Illustrated by the Author should have arrived in lockers by now…

“illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself and with the complete text printed in two colours.”

* A Signum University online course “Tolkien and the Classical World”, run by Hamish Williams — the author of a book of the same title. Starts October 2023, and booking now.

* A new ‘Digital Tolkien Project’ update briefing, via YouTube.

* Joe Pearce is interviewed on Tolkien topics, on this week’s Register Radio podcast.

* Austin Freeman is interviewed about his recent book Tolkien Dogmatics, on the latest PostConsumer podcast…

“He will be a speaker at Urbana Theological Seminary’s 2023 Tolkien Conference where Chris Marchand (who runs PostConsumer Reports) will also be a speaker.”

* Holly Ordway gives more interviews about her new book Tolkien’s Faith, on the podcasts Conversations with Consequences, and Pints with Jack: The C.S. Lewis Podcast.

* On the Mythmakers podcast, An Evening with the Inklings… “our esteemed guests recreated the type of literary discussion that the original group would have engaged in”.

* And finally, The Jersey Catholic (Jersey, USA) has a new article on how “C.S. Lewis’ work continues to gain popularity 60 years after his death”. Illustrated by a large, if rather blurry, picture. Which I’ve here taken the liberty of enhancing and colourising. By doing this I’ve noticed that Lewis did actually have huge ‘hobbit’ ears. I had mistakenly thought that his large ears were a spurious artefact of an AI generated picture that I’d seen on a poster some months ago. I was wrong…

C.S. Lewis (AI enhanced, cleaned, colourised, enlarged to 4k. Original: 1955 portrait by Walter Stoneman – National Portrait Gallery, London).