Tolkien Gleanings #362
* Newly published, the book Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings. One of the book’s creators is Malcolm Guite, former Chaplain at and now Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. The book is a multi-author Inklings “devotional” which aims to help Christians… “to rediscover Lent through the lens of imagination-infused faith”. Lent is the term used for the 40 days of Christian repentance prior to Easter — usually expressed through fasting, prayer, humility and sacrifice — and apparently meant to be a personal echo of Christ’s ’40 days in the wilderness’.
* The Reading Tolkien podcast talks with Michael Drout about his book The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation, due for release on 2nd December 2025. I see that The Prancing Pony Podcast also has an interview with Drout. For both links the .MP3 downloads are hidden under the “… More” button.
* In French, the new 800-page book Une lecture du Hobbit et du Seigneur des Anneaux de Tolkien. L’arborescence du cercle (November 2025) (‘A reading of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings: The Circle and the Tree’).
* The Tolkien Society’s latest book Numenor, The Mighty and Frail: Proceedings of The Tolkien Society Seminar 2023 (November 2025) has now been published. Among others, contents include…
– Dealing with the Dead: Nuances of ancient Egypt and medieval theology in Numenor.
– Ecology of Imperialism: Environmental History for Numenor.
– “By the Waters of Anduin We Lay Down and Wept”: Exilic Theology in the ‘Akallabeth’.
* Newly posted online, the Spanish Tolkien Society this week offers a long interview in Spanish with John Garth, which originally appeared in their journal Estel No. 88 (2018). Back in September I see they also had a long blog post in Spanish celebrating 100 issues of Estel.
* The student article “The Great Wizarding Duel: Tolkien’s Possible Influence on Rowling”, in the new 2025 edition of the University of South Carolina’s annual open-access The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English.
* Now 99.8% uploaded and for sale, the picture library of the venerable magazine Country Life, from the magazine’s inception through to today. It’s something of a pain to filter and navigate the collection, and the lack of dating of images is very regrettable. Nor can individual images be linked in a blog via a simple URL link. Tagging is sometimes subject to glitches (e.g. searching for illustrator, seeking portraits of illustrators such as Quentin Blake or Ronald Searle, only gets endless illustrations). Overall, the site is far from ideal for the user. But… the determined Tolkienist may unearth a gem, especially among the many old b&w images of Oxford and Oxfordshire. Judging by my tests a high-res image licence for personal use appear to be £75, and one can also get licences for public display or publication. The state of AI colourisation of b&w is such that your chosen image could easily be nicely colourised.
* Full auctioneer details, with good photos, of the alleged Tolkien items due for sale in the forthcoming “Precious Things” auction in Bath. As with all auctions, ‘buyer beware’. Update: Auction now “postponed”.
* And finally, leading auctioneer Christies now has a page for the forthcoming item “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Merton College Desk, Late 19th Century”, and offers seven high-res pictures of the desk.
