Tolkien Gleanings #331
* Tolkien Notes 22 (September 2025), new at the blog of Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull. They also have links to their current “addenda and corrigenda” PDFs for various books including the new Poems, and an “Index to The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981, 2023)”.
* Drout’s forthcoming The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation has a cover image, a seemingly firm date, and is now pre-ordering for the more affordable Kindle ebook.
* The UK’s annual Heritage Open Days happen each September. 2025 offers a number of free tours of Tolkien sites, including the Birmingham Oratory and in nearby Warwick the “beautiful church where J.R.R. Tolkien was married in 1916”. Nothing Tolkien-specific for the Lickeys, but visitors will be able to see “watercolours by Elijah Walton of the area in the 1850s” and the views, hills and lanes Tolkien knew as a boy were much the same fifty years later.
* The Spanish Tolkien Society has announced the 21st edition of its Essay Awards for unpublished essays. Open to all it seems, but you do also have to submit a Spanish version of your work. Deadline: 5th October 2025.
* There’s to be a Prancing Pony Podcast Moot, just before Christmas 2025. 18th – 21st December in Dallas, Texas and online. The theme will be “Creating Historical Depth within Fantastical Worlds”.
* I’m pleased to see that The Time Machine has been translated into Gaelic (Inneal na Time by H.G. Wells). It’s currently battling A’ Hobat by one J.R.R. Tolkien, for the annual Gaelic translation prize. Seems a little unfair that two great masterpieces should have to go head-to-head, but I guess it’s the quality and fluidity of the translation that counts.
* Recent lidar (ground penetrating radar) probing by archaeologists has discovered more about one of Sir Gawain’s two likely ancient Roman road routes, the routes which could have taken an armored knight up off the Cheshire Plain and into North Staffordshire.
* And finally, I note that Tolkien’s posthumous book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo is now fifty years old. Having been published in September 1975.