Station Zero

I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings . Tremble before the hotness of my takes... The Uffington White Horse, c/o Wikipedia Q: How cool are the Riders of Rohan? A: Extremely cool. They combine the outfits and culture of the Anglo Saxons with the expert horsemanship and healthy outdoor lifestyles of the Sioux or the Apache. They were always my favourites when I was young, and now that I'm very much no longer young the only problem I can see with them is that they make the Gondor crowd in The Return of the the King look a bit dull by comparison. But we haven't reached The Return of the King yet: we're still on Book One of The Two Towers , and if you're still reading this, thank you so much! We left Merry and Pippin marching off to war with the Ents, so now it's time for the narrative to loop back to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, who have just met a strange old man in another part of the forest. The strange old man turns out to be Gandalf, who has much impor...

 These are some idle lockdown musings based on a re-read of The Lord of the Rings . Don't @ me. A 1976 Athena poster designed by Jimmy Cauty (who was only 17 when he drew it.) When I read The Lord of the Rings as a child it came from the library, and there would always be an annoying wait before I could find the next volume. Nowadays, I can go straight from The Fellowship of the Ring into The Two Towers , and the change of pace is remarkable. The Fellowship … started off at a slow ramble, but The Two Towers sets off at a run. The opening sentence is 'Aragorn sped on up the hill.' and the opening chapter is shorter than any in The Fellowship... More importantly, for the first time none of the central characters are hobbits. Frodo and Sam have headed off to Mordor and won’t be heard of again until Book Two, while Merry and Pippin have been nabbed by the orcs. Pausing only to give a suitable send-off to Boromir, who has redeemed himself for his attempt to grab the Ring...