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, Tolkien. Smith, a member of Tolkien’s T.C.B.S. circle and a ‘wild and wholehearted admirer’ of his early mythological writings, died of wounds on the Western Front in 1916. Just months later, Tolkien wrote his creation myth, The Music of the Ainur. Several of the poems in the poems of Geoffrey Bache Smith, edited posthumously by his friends J.R ..read more

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 would be rather a different story. His driving (“Charge ’em and they’ll scatter!”) is said to have reminded Oxford contemporaries of Mr Toad in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Mr Toad took out his map and spread it with a flourish on the shiny bonnet of his new car while he held up the damp and mouldy invitation in his other hand. “You see, Ratty? I kne ..read more

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 post, I will offer some more evidence – in a video this time – and simultaneously make good on a promise I made in that earlier post. Geoffrey Bache Smith and others in The Frogs by Aristophanes at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, 1913 On the serious side, Smith persuaded Tolkien to become a poet and was therefore truly instrumental in turning him ..read more

In a guest post, Oxford English Dictionary historian and lexicographer Peter Gilliver sheds new light on one of the most curious characters to cross the young J.R.R. Tolkien’s path The classical scholar E.R. Dodds, who matriculated at Oxford a year after Tolkien, wrote in his autobiography Missing Persons: ‘If on leaving Oxford I had been asked which of my English contemporaries were most likely to achieve fame as writers I should have named without hesitation T.W. Earp and Aldous Huxley.’ He would surely have been surprised to learn that the fate of achieving fame as a writer was to fall ..read more

It’s not often you stumble upon a piece of writing by a key member of Tolkien’s school circle, the T.C.B.S. Today I am pleased as Punch to be able to present such a piece by G.B. Smith, to mark his 127th birthday. G.B. Smith in his army days – with added colour Our memory of Smith is burdened with poignancy. He survived the entire five-month Battle of the Somme only to be hit by shrapnel from an exploding shell days after it the battle had finished and miles from the trenches. The wound was so light that he walked to the casualty clearing station. Three days later he was dead from an infection ..read more

[This was published in Oxford Today, the university’s alumni magazine, ahead of the 2012 London Olympics. The most dated things about it are the reference to a certain Mayor of London by the name of Boris, and Oxford Today itself, which has since been replaced by Quad magazine.] Mexico, 1968. The world watches as athletes of 108 nations file in. Past or future Oxford students step forward for Britain, including David Hemery (St Catherine’s) who will win gold in the men’s 400m hurdles; and also for Sierra Leone, New Zealand, the United States, and Norway (King Harald no less, Balliol). The fla ..read more

Even after 30-odd years it still happens. I’m in the middle of dusty nowhere trying to lug a broken television set across Spain, or I’m arguing with some bureaucrat who won’t let me get going, or I’m hopelessly lost in a labyrinthine building, probably still in my pyjamas. When finally I hurry breathless into the exam room and turn over the exam paper, I realise the awful truth. I can’t possibly answer these questions because I haven’t done any revision, I’ve come to the wrong exam, or I’m just incompetent. These are just bad dreams, of course. I’m extraordinarily lucky that I don’t have more ..read more

An unexpected delight of the past year has been editing Kid: A History of the Future by Sebastian De Souza, better known as an actor in The Great, Normal People, The Borgias and Skins. The job went a long way beyond the usual copy-edit and was an absolute joy. Sebastian made some kind comments in his acknowledgements, which I share here. ‘Gargantuan thanks must go to John Garth who took that bowl of literary scrambled eggs and – as editor, brainstormer, and occasional co-writer – turned it into the three-course meal that you have just devoured. Without John’s wisdom and intelligence, his tirel ..read more

‘Magnificent. The commentary is great, really thoroughly researched; the pictures are stunning’ — Tom Shippey, author of The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century From world-renowned Tolkien expert John Garth comes the authoritative exploration of the real-world locations behind the legendarium, and the wider inspirations behind Middle-earth’s incomparably rich landscapes, realms, towers, and more. Packed with insights and gorgeous images, including many artworks by Tolkien. ︎ Read an excerpt at LitHub. ︎ Unboxing video by John Garth with chapter-by-chapter comments ..read more

A tribute embedded in A Wizard of Earthsea?   I used this question to introduce a social media post yesterday. Is should have waited until today, because this turns out to be the anniversary of Ursula Le Guin’s passing, a fact that I had overlooked. So now I seize the day in order to enlarge and refine my observation here, where it can more easily be found. What happens if you want to translate the name of Ursula Le Guin’s world, Earthsea, into the Old Speech (or True Speech), the language of magic there? Let’s see… Ursula Le Guin’s map of Earthsea, a primary piece of world-building by na ..read more