The first post in this little series got a lot more attention than I had expected, so I’ll start this one with a word of explanation: I’m not a Tolkien scholar (or any other sort of scholar). I don’t know very much more than the bare facts about J.R.R Tolkien’s life, and not only have I never read his letters or essays, and I don’t know his books beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (there’s a good reason, I think, why he never published The Silmarillion and the rest in his lifetime.) But I’ve been reading and re-reading The Lord of the Rings since I was about ten, and these posts are just a record of some idle thoughts that occur to me as I go through it again now that I’m about fifty. The gate of Moria, by Alan Lee By the time we reach the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring we have already walked a long way in the hobbits’ furry footsteps. Book One was packed with incidents, characters and details, and rose at the end to a gripping climactic chase , so Boo...
Reviews and ruminations by Philip Reeve, author of the Mortal Engines series, the Railhead trilogy, Here Lies Arthur, Goblins, and The Legend of Kevin, Pugs of the Frozen North, etc, with Sarah McIntyre.