Author of Tolkien and the Great War, Mythopoeic Award winner and 2015 Fellow of the Black Mountain Institute
I’m about to embark on a doctoral research degree about how world war and other modern conflicts shaped Tolkien’s masterpiece. Two newly published literary polls illustrate why I’m especially pleased that Oxford University has accepted my application – and why Continue reading
I’ll admit it’s a bit late to be reviewing the past year. But the month around the New Year was consumed by more important things – of which more later. Anyway, I had a busy time with Tolkien in 2025 Continue reading
I’ve been extremely quiet online this year, but I have not been idle. In fact, up to the end of September I was having a very productive time researching and writing on Tolkien. But just when I was ready to Continue reading
Goblin caves at the North Pole! The Father Christmas letters penned by Tolkien tell us some surprising things about the Arctic. They borrow penguins from Antarctica and feature a polar bear who can speak, write and draw. The North Pole Continue reading
Part two, in which we wet our wonges Tolkien’s paper ‘Chaucer as a Philologist’ (1934) is an analysis of northern English dialect in the Reeve’s Tale, one of the Canterbury Tales. Tolkien argues that Geoffrey Chaucer displays a philological interest Continue reading
Part One, in which the vicar entertains I’m in the middle of copy-editing an upcoming edition of Tolkien’s work on Chaucer, edited with commentary by John Bowers and Peter Steffenson, for Oxford University Press. Tolkien on Chaucer (Opens in a Continue reading
It’s not every day that you receive an award also given to the director-general of Syrian antiquities, the director of archaeology at Troy and the director of the Colosseum in Rome. But that day came for me on 3 September. Continue reading
In a guest post, Allan Turner, Tolkien scholar and formerly Lecturer in English at the University of Jena, Germany, provides a musical insight into A Spring Harvest, the 1918 anthology of Geoffrey Bache Smith’s poetry co-edited by his friend J.R.R, Continue reading
I’ve posted this on social media already but I’m going to put it here too because, well, I like it. Writing about Tolkien’s unfinished Númenor time-travel novel The Lost Road, I almost inevitably mistype it as “The Lost Toad”. That Continue reading
I’ve just returned from the first-ever conference focusing on Geoffrey Bache Smith, his poetry, and his influence on his great friend, Tolkien. In a previous post, I spotlighted an under-appreciated aspect of Smith: his sense of humour. In this new Continue reading