Tolkien Gleanings #338
* First Things magazine has a new long audio interview with Douglas Estes on his recent books, these being Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology and Theology and Tolkien: Constructive Theology.
* From Germany, a call for papers for a conference on “Enmonsterisations in the Fantastic”. The text of the call refers to Tolkien a lot. Not surprising, since on reading further it turns out the event will be the 2026 conference of the German Inklings Society. Deadline for proposals: 10th January 2026.
* A short documentary film on YouTube, about a Marquette University project “Preserving 6,000 Fan Voices” (2025). A project in which… “each person has an open mic for three minutes, to share their thoughts on Tolkien”.
* Talking of Marquette, I see their repository has “The Inherent Goodness of Gardens and their Stewards” as depicted in Tolkien’s work. Freely available online.
* Free in open-access, the latest January 2024 edition of the venerable journal The Lion and the Unicorn. This is usually a paywalled journal, dedicated to scholarly discussion of literature for children. I’m unable to discover if this means all issues going forward will be open-access. However, the journal is supposed to have three issues a year, and yet there are none at all in the rest of 2024 or 2025. Which perhaps suggests it has ceased, and that only the final issue was made open-access? It doesn’t seem as if the editors have moved it away from the publisher and made it open-access there. Anyway, the latest (last?) issue is free.
* A local weekly public lecture series in North Carolina, “The Power of Story to Mend Division: Insights from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters”. Interesting theme, and also a pleasing poster. Every week through 23rd October 2025.
* And finally, John Garth on “The day Tolkien became an air raid warden” during the Second World War ($ paywall). He has pinned down the date…
“The day Tolkien enrolled as a Second World War air raid warden has been revealed in a previously unseen image from Oxford’s city archives. It was on Friday 19th September 1941 — much later than has been suggested.”
I recall Tolkien was also a volunteer as a member of the Fire-watching Service? Which in the darkness of ‘the blackout’ must have been a fine opportunity for star-watching on clear nights. The paywall means I don’t know if Garth has spotted the connection, but I might add that Tolkien was on ‘the blackout’ streets of Oxford just as Sauron’s Great Darkness was gathering in Middle-earth…
“I sat up ‘on duty’ till 1.30 this morn…. At this point [in the tale] I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit!” (Tolkien, ‘Letters’ 74, April 1944).
This must mean he was writing Sam stewing the brace of coneys, which in ‘Middle-earth time’ was three days before Sauron’s Great Darkness covered the lands.
Picture: Royal Mail postage stamp celebrating the role of the Air Raid Wardens on the Home Front during the Second World War. We see the “W” hat of a warden, and his sling-case which would have had a gas-mask, gas/fire rattle, whistle, binoculars, street-maps, notepads and more. It seems that volunteers wore civilian clothes and hat/badge/armband, while the leaders of each very-local warden’s hut/shelter wore Army uniform. Apparently pipe-smoking was allowed.