A new exciting Tolkien event has just been announced! Festival in the Shire is a conference, exhibition and fair celebrating themes inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, which will be held in mid-Wales, in Machynlleth’s historic Y Plas house and grounds between…
Tolkien, Race and Cultural History shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Award 2009
I was delighted to find out that my book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits has been shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for 2009. The Katharine Briggs Folklore Award is an annual book prize established…
Clash of the Gods – Thanks!
Thanks to all of you who sent e-mails with kind words about “Clash of the Gods”: I am pleased you found it informative and engaging. I have still only seen bits and pieces of the three episodes I was in…
Clash of the Gods
A new series on world mythologies has been airing in the USA History Channel since late August 2009. The series started with Classical Greek Myths (Zeus, Medusa, Hercules, and others) and the next few episodes are now going to focus…
Talk on Tolkien and Wales at Pentyrch
On Friday 25 September at 7:30pm at Pentyrch Village Hall at Pentyrch, Cardiff, I will give a talk on “Tolkien’s Welsh Inspirations, Language and Places” for the Pentyrch and District Local History Society. Everyone wellcome! See here for the Pentyrch…
Reviews of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History
In the last few months a number of reviews of my book Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits have appeared in various journals and magazines. I was delighted to see the latest one: a review by Jon…
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún has now been released!
The new Tolkien book I mentioned earlier on this year (see 30 January 2009) has now been released! Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a verse retelling of the Völsunga saga, which he originally composed in the 1920s…
Tolkien Studies Vol. 6
The sixth volume of the journal Tolkien Studies has just been published. As always it contains a great selection of scholarly articles, shorter notes and book reviews on many different aspects of Tolkien’s creativity. The leading article is a very…
Hobbit Songs and Rhymes: The Folklore of Middle-earth
I was recently asked by lotrplaza.com to contribute an article to their new Scholars Forum on a Tolkien-related topic. My recently published book Tolkien, and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits includes an important part on Tolkien’s knowledge of folklore…
Tolkien at Kalamazoo
The International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo at Western Michigan University, is one of the oldest and most prestigious conferences on Medieval Studies in the world. The conference is now in its forty-fourth year, and for the past nine…