* An update on Signum University Press. The Press is barely six months old, but now has a firm slate for 2023 and beyond. In Tolkien studies there’s news of the book Cardinal Vices of Middle-earth (September 2023), a new “comparative analysis of the role of chosen vices and virtues” from a Catholic perspective; and “An interview series with Verlyn Flieger”.
* A casting-call for Fellowship: Tolkien & Lewis… “an upcoming limited [screen] series, based on the friendship, faith, and fantasy of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.” Filming in London in early spring 2023, and the call has a rather tight deadline. Why do such projects/jobs always seem to have a ‘rush-rush’ deadline of days, rather than at least a month or so?
* Wheaton University now has its list of summer school 2023 courses. Includes “The Makings of Middle Earth: Creation, Creativity, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings“, and the “Otherworlds of Imagination in C.S. Lewis”. Seems to be aimed at regional students who want a long taster of what the university can offer. I had to look up “Wheaton, IL”, and it turns out that this well-known university is on the edge of the city of Chicago.
* Issue 2 of my Tolkien Gleanings as a PDF magazine, now available for download.
* And finally, oh dear… more PR piffle for bamboozled tourists from the city of Birmingham. The Birmingham University tower… “is famously believed to have been the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc, the black tower of Isengard”. Will the city ever learn that there’s a really moving true story to tell about Tolkien and Birmingham? They don’t have to make it up.