The Three Cups Hotel may become two flats if developers in the U.K. get their way. Standing in the way is a 10-year-old boy, Jeremy Irons and a nation of Tolkienites waiting to hear the news. Thanks to diedye for finding this and sharing it on our message boards. The hotel in Lyme Regis, Dorset, is derelict but the location where J.R.R. Tolkien spent time and sketched and is also famous for the film “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” and has hosted the likes of Jane Austen, Alfred Tennyson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. You can read the full story here. Any TORn readers ready to leap into the hotel business? Rally the troops in the U.K!
From Amazon.com Blogs: The Author of the Century, of course, needs no help from anyone (least of all a speck like me). No force on earth could undermine either the juggernaut implacability of his sales, nor the world-historic scale of his influence, nor the truly enormous weight of his achievement. The man puts the ‘epic’ in ‘epic win’. However–or, more accurately, because of that–every few years, certain as tides, someone will write a splenetic screed against the Professor, explaining why he’s the devil/ worst things to happen to fantasy/voice of reaction/zomg most boring writer EVER /etc. The Oedipal Resentment motivating many of these attacks may be trivially obvious, especially in those from within fantastic fiction, but it doesn’t follow that the substance of all the criticism is baseless. There are perfectly reasonable arguments to be had about the impact, nature, scale and success of Tolkien’s work. China Mieville Talks Tolkien
Dr. Amy H. Sturgis writes: I wanted to let you know that my recent public lecture “When Harry Met Faërie: The Tolkien Solution to the Rowling Problem” was recorded and is now available for free download and streaming on the latest episode of StarShipSofa: The Science Fiction Audio Magazine here.
“Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings” are two of the most widely appealing film series in history. While they share many common elements, there is little argument that knights and swords sit at the core of each. The Jedi masters and their sabers - the weapon passed from father to son - share many common elements with Aragorn and his ancestral heirloom weapon in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
The sword, in whatever form, remains an important feature in cultures around the globe. It remains a symbol of the warrior in an age when many of us never need to fight anybody. Daniel McNicoll has directed a documentary, “Reclaiming The Blade,” that explores the sword and its standing in contemporary society and uses many examples from popular culture to do it. Read the rest of this entry »
LoriGreenleaf writes: A Tolkien Lecture is being held on Wednesday 13th May at Tremough Campus, Falmouth, Cornwall. Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien’s popular literature will be explored at the Tremough Campus, Falmouth,UK as part of a special Tolkien Day on Wednesday May 13th. Read the rest of this entry »
Kristin wrotes: A review of The Legend of Siguard & Gudrún by Tom Shippey has been posted on the Times Online website. Long, analytical, and very insightful and informative, it reveals just how important Tolkien’s poems are as literature. Tom Shippey Reviews Siguard & Gudrún
J.R.R. Tolkien’s newest posthumous work lands in retail today. The body of the non Middle-earth tale is told in two narrative poems told in the form of Norse mythology with a Tolkien lecture and an introduction from his son Christopher. Tolkien was a master of the forms of Old Norse and Old Englsih poetry while for most of us, that brilliance is likely to go unappreciated, there is still treasure to be gleaned in understanding the author and the traditions that led him to construct his own cosmology.
The Guardian in the UK published a faxed interview while while reviews are popping up like mushrooms. Read some here, here, and here.
NEW YORK - The latest J.R.R. Tolkien project lasted six years, more than half as long as the author needed to complete his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Getting permission to release a book in electronic form can be as hard - or harder - than writing it. “The Tolkien estate wanted to be absolutely confident that e-books were not something ephemeral,” says David Roth-Ey, director of business development at HarperCollins UK, which announced last week that the late British author’s work - among the world’s most popular - would be available for downloads. “We were finally able to convince the Tolkien estate that the e-book is a legitimate, widespread format.” Tolkien’s in, but e-library still lacking
DiveTwin points out on our message boards that a campaign has been launched to re-open a pub that was once a haunt of none other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s. The story reads: Pub lovers are backing a campaign to return a pub once popular with Lord of the Rings writer JRR Tolkien to its former glory. The Community Alert on Pubs group is hoping to re-open the Grade-II Listed Three Cups Hotel in Lyme Regis, West Dorset, which was where Tolkien is believed to have penned much of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.Read on
The folks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt send this bit of coolness to us! They want to whet your appetites for the May 5th release of ‘The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún’, take a look at the foreword written by Christopher Tolkien!
In his essay On Fairy-Stories (1947) my father wrote of books that he read in his childhood, and in the course of this he said:
I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur were better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd and the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable. Read the rest of this entry »
Loading ...
The Three Cups Hotel may become two flats if developers in the U.K. get their way. Standing in the way is a 10-year-old boy, Jeremy Irons and a nation of Tolkienites waiting to hear the news. Thanks to diedye for finding this and sharing it on our message boards. The hotel in Lyme Regis, Dorset, is derelict but the location where J.R.R. Tolkien spent time and sketched and is also famous for the film “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” and has hosted the likes of Jane Austen, Alfred Tennyson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. You can read the full story here. Any TORn readers ready to leap into the hotel business? Rally the troops in the U.K!
J.R.R. Tolkien’s newest posthumous work lands in retail today. The body of the non Middle-earth tale is told in two narrative poems told in the form of Norse mythology with a Tolkien lecture and an introduction from his son Christopher. Tolkien was a master of the forms of Old Norse and Old Englsih poetry while for most of us, that brilliance is likely to go unappreciated, there is still treasure to be gleaned in understanding the author and the traditions that led him to construct his own cosmology.
