Tolkien Gleanings #280
* CANCELLED. From the West Midlands, a new bare-bones website for the revived Middle-earth Festival. The organisers have found a new site at Norton Lane, Wythall, near Birmingham. The announced dates are 13th and 14th September 2025. No help from the city or the Arts Council with the event, so sponsorship, stewards, and donations are now welcome. The website has no details of bookable trader-tables, as yet.
The site is in the countryside south of Birmingham, between Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon, but the little place has a train station — a train from Birmingham Moor Street station will thus get you there in short order. The weather should be reasonable, at that time of year. I’d suggest that attendees with a car might also consider trips out to adjacent Tolkien places such as the Lickey Hills, Barnt Green, maybe Warwick, perhaps even Malvern or the Rollright Stones. The large town of Stratford-upon-Avon (for a touch of Shakespeare) is probably best avoided at that time of year, since it will be absolutely rammed with tourists. Although the much less-visited Mary Arden’s Farm is one of the few genuine properties, and is also rather hobbit-ish in its rustic feel. It’s where Shakespeare’s mum grew up, out in the countryside at Wilmcote.
* An attempt at a Masters dissertation for the University of South Bohemia, Colours and Numbers in the Symbolic Worlds of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle (2025). It’s a survey that offers brief entries on each colour for each book, thus “yellow” for LoTR notes Gollum’s fear of the yellow sun, the prevalence of yellow at Bombdadil’s house, and the yellow hair of Goldberry. The same entry fails to notice that: hobbits are “notably fond of yellow”; the yellow willow-leaves of Old Man Willow; the yellow leaves of the mallorn tree; the little yellow flower elanor; Sauron’s eye “yellow as a cat’s”, etc. Still, the text’s very incompleteness suggests the possibility of a future comprehensive ‘compendium of colours’ as found in the Hobbit and LoTR. Freely available online.
* Newly available in Polish, the printed volume arising from their Tolkiena Day 2024 (2025). The broad theme of the papers presented at this university sponsored event was “Service and Sacrifice”, and all are in Polish.
* Newly listed on Amazon UK, Parma Eldalamberon 21: Qenya Noun Structure (January 2025).
* At Oblate School of Theology, an online lecture by Austin Freeman on “Tolkien as Apologist to the Imagination”, set for 27th February 2025 on Zoom. Booking now.
* Potentially very useful for scholars, Elon Musk’s new benchmark-topping Grok 3 AI is currently fully available for free. ‘Fully’ meaning that it includes Grok 3’s full DeepSearch in-depth research module (not to be confused with the recent questionable and censored Chinese DeepSeek AI). Twitter (X) and Google accounts can access Grok.com and Grok 3, even from the UK. After the unspecified free period it’ll then be $40 a month (ouch), and perhaps not available in Europe due to their restrictive AI regulations. UK access could even be shaky in the near future, if X is forced to quit the UK. Use it while you can.
* Another win for Oxford and children’s imaginative literature. Fine Books magazine reports “Major Lewis Carroll Collection Donated to Oxford by American Book Collector”. An online exhibition is planned in due course.
* And finally, I recently found a dramatic picture of Tolkien’s old school on eBay. Seen here as ruins, in the Birmingham Evening Despatch newspaper, 24th April 1936. The city planners would replace it with a large cinema. Tolkien was then at home and hobbling around on crutches, recovering from a serious leg injury. He was also preparing an ‘Introduction to Old English Poetry’ for his summer term undergraduates. One suspects that the famous Old English poem “The Ruin” would have seemed an especially poignant study-poem, at this point in time.
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