Welcome to The Hall of Fire

July 2008

The Hall of Fire has been quieter this year as the films have slipped out of view. Some interest has been shown in the projected Hobbit films, but the comments so far often express anxiety. The most interesting development in Education is of course the appointment of our new Education Secretary – Ian Collier. It's a great pleasure to welcome him to a formal role after many years of informal collaboration between Publicity and Education. I shall still be here to do the day-to-day work as usual, answering queries and supporting new and established writers.

Throughout the year we have had a wide range of requests for help from students and researchers.

It's great to get feedback and find out that the information we provided was useful. It is especially exciting to know that another substantial piece of scholarship has been added to the field of Tolkien studies.

There is a new link to a series of one-day courses held in association with Sutton Hoo. Dr. Sam Newton, the main lecturer, is a great promoter of the connection between Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon studies, and a recent speaker was Elizabeth Solopova, co-editor of The Keys of Middle-earth. Dr. Newton also runs courses on Anglo-Saxon literature annually at Urchfont in Wiltshire. For anyone who wants to follow Tolkien into Anglo-Saxon literature, language, and history, and to discover why he spent his academic life researching and writing on it, details of the courses can be found at www.wuffingeducation.co.uk or by emailing cliff@wuffingeducation.co.uk or by writing to

Wuffing Education, 4 Hilly Fields, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 4DX,

or telephone 01394 386498

There is a new link on the Education Pages webpages to the Tolkien Studies Journal. With the changes to Mallorn, Tolkien Studies will offer researchers another outlet for longer articles and essays.

It is not unusual for a journal to set a standard text from which to quote, it is done in some Shakespeare journals, and in view of the 'many editions' of Tolkien's work, this is may be a good idea, but it also has the potential to cause problems for writers outside USA.

Andrew Butler and I were able to introduce two people with special interest in Tolkien and William Morris. This contact is in line with Tom Shippey's recent call for Tolkien studies to be extended into possible 19thC influences (rather than direct sources).

We heard from our colleagues in Lahore that they were engaged in a discussion about Denethor, and other colleagues are continuing with translations and other writing projects.

The new Children of Hurin book has already become a resource for research.

It is good to know that there are a number of new writers outside the academic community who are also beginning to venture into Tolkien research. It is a pleasure to be able to encourage the exploration of fresh new ideas.

With the launch of the new LotR musical, the Society was asked to participate in a local radio interview, as it was for BBC Radio Oxford and no one else was available I ended up giving a telephone interview. After all the accounts of previous interviewers and programme makers wanting nothing but stories of how the Tolkien Society is just about people dressing up, it was nice to be asked 'sensible' questions about the appeal of Tolkien's work and the songs he included as part of LotR.

The problems of bringing LotR to the stage, the screen, and even to the radio, including adaptations and the limitations imposed by the different media of theatre and film would make Tolkien a fit subject now for Drama Studies courses and for Film Studies. For this, at least, we may be grateful, that dramatisations of Tolkien's work are making it applicable in new areas of study and research.

I have recently been contacted by the webmaster of the Tolkienlibrary.com asking about the forthcoming book The Mirror Crack'd: Fear and Horror in JRR Tolkien's Major Works. It is 2 years since the original conference papers were given at Leeds so it will be good to see the hard work of the contributors in print in the near future (August/September 08). Some of the contributors to this volume are well known, others are new members of the academic research community. The contributors are:

The topics covered include

While it is always a pleasure to help with any questions and requests for information, there have been some different ones recently. This suggests that not only is the study of Tolkien's work still progressing, but that readers, researchers, and younger students are looking to expand on what has already been done, questioning established work and taking inspiration from Tolkien's known sources.

The range of topics, the different educational levels at which students are working, and the world-wide appeal of Tolkien's work continues to be demonstrated. It's just a shame that we see so few indications of similar interest from UK, although at least one Tolkien-related PhD is ongoing. Hopefully, the lack of information about research projects here is because books and guidance are more readily available, so if you are studying Tolkien's work, at any level, we would be glad to hear about it.

If you are teaching or about to teach a course using any of Tolkien's works we should be glad to hear about it.

If you are currently researching, or would like to research a Tolkien-related topic, we should also like to hear about it, and we are, as always, happy to help as we may.

Lynn Forest-Hill