Tolkien Gleanings #137.
* Tolkien’s Oxford Eagle and Child pub is sold and saved, having being purchased by billionaire Larry Ellison’s Ellison Institute of Technology, which is also establishing a new science campus. The “renowned architect Norman Foster will renovate” the venue beloved of Tolkien and his friends, keeping it as a pub — but also adding a study space for “Ellison Scholars and EIT Oxford faculty” together with a new restaurant.
The pub in the late 1970s.
* The seventh PDF issue of my Tolkien Gleanings ‘zine is now freely available at Archive.org.
* Joseph Pearce reflects on “50 Years with J.R.R. Tolkien”.
* Quillette has an article musing on “Misreading Middle-Earth: Tolkien and the Contemporary Reader”…
“it is difficult to imagine [The Lord of the Rings] being written today. From the subtlety of its symbolism to the profoundly Catholic character of the prose, with its pseudo-Biblical narrative and baroque embellishments, many aspects of Tolkien’s style and storytelling would be unpalatable to most modern publishers”.
* Freely online, an undergraduate survey of “The nature of evil in Catholicism as represented in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien” (2022).
* The table-of-contents for Amon Hen #302 (August 2023). Has a book review of The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, and articles including “Loose Lips Cost Lives” — which at a guess is likely about the need for caution when conveying information in Middle-earth.
* New on YouTube, Paolo Nardi and Alena Afanasyeva talk about “Tolkien in Russia”. “Discussing Tolkien’s reception in the Soviet Union and Russian-speaking countries. The Lord of the Rings was banned by the regime…”. 90 minutes, not in English. Appears to be popular both in terms of views and comments.
* The annual German language Tolkien Times PDF ‘zine / brochure, now available for free download (scroll down the page). Also has a review of Garner’s Treacle Walker in its German translation.
* And finally, scenes from Tolkien as Byzantine paintings.
