Station Zero

While I was working on my recent series of posts about The Lord of the Rings , the writer and Tolkien scholar John Garth kindly sent me a copy of his new book, The Worlds of J.R.R.Tolkien . Here’s my review.  When you’re a fan of a writer’s work, it’s natural to want to follow it to its sources, and find out what inspired it. The temptation is always to delve into their biography and connect key experiences to images in their books. I think one can go too far with that - when I was coming up with the various worlds on which the Railhead trilogy takes place, I sometimes drew on vivid memories of places I know well, sometimes took inspiration from nice photographs and concept art I saw online, and sometimes just made stuff up on the hoof to suit the demands of the story. Once it’s all been rewritten a few times, I don’t think the reader can tell the difference, and even I have often forgotten where a particular image came from. But there is no doubt that JRR Tolkien drew on some re...