Between the Cliffs and the Forest by Steve Gladwin

My interview with Jackie Marchant, author of The Sword of Red.

The mist clears to reveal the cliffs of Jackie's Langrinia

At the age of thirteen I remember sitting down with a notebook to write my epic fantasy - I'd probably read The Lord of the Rings or something! I began a story called 'The Chronicles of Acteon', set to work with a will, before abandoning it a few chapters later. Shame, that, as I had had - like so many young writers - such wonderful names for the twenty five plus chapters, only to find that what seems a great idea at the time, soon became just a stick to beat myself with.

'The Chronicles of Acteon', which no-one else remembers, were inspired by The Trigan Empire,  a serial created by Don Lawrence in the children's magazine Look and Learn, something which I was weekly riveted by, even though I don't remember ever getting to read the end. 

By one of those happy coincidences, we long deprived Trigan Empire fans are living at exactly the right point in time, as the original twelve volume series will be released, beginning March 19th, in just four volumes,

I've also been revisiting my love of seventies Marvel comic book art and the particular writing and drawing talents of the teams who brought everyone's favourite Cimmerian, Robert E Howard's Conan, to life, namely writer Roy Thomas, and artists Barry Smith and John Buscema. This set me to purchasing rather too many of the aforesaid on kindle, including a fascinating volume by Roy Thomas describing how he set about adapting the initial run of Conan comics and thus recreating Howard's Hyborian age for new fans. And like the average Trigan Empire fan, you've picked a fine time to be alive, as right now, any number of Conan Marvel re-runs are available and a whole new series of his adventures to boot scripted by Jason Aaron and in the sort of glorious colours and detail we 70's fans could only have dreamed about.

So how did they do it, these creators of magical worlds? How did your Tolkiens and Moorcocks, Pratchetts and Robert E Howards, Le Guins and Guy Gavriel Kay's go about it building an entirely new world.

Luckily my friend Jackie Marchant is around to give us some of the answers, as the same goddess of happy timing provided me, at that very moment, with The Sword of Red, the first book of her proposed YA fantasy series. I'd been excited about it since she told us about it on a Folly Farm Writers Retreat in 2015, then still a sprawling behemoth she hadn't yet managed to control.

So  without more ado!

Photo by Jo Cotterill

Jackie, the first thing that struck me when I started reading your book was just how much I was enjoying it and therefore how much I must have missed out on all those great fantasy books. Can I ask you first where fantasy actually ranks in your favourite genres of books and if it is high, why is that?

I read a wide variety of genres, but most of my fantasy reading is children’s and YA – How to Train your Dragon, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, etc etc.  One of my favourite books of all time is The Hobbit.  I absolutely love fantasy films and TV – Star Wars, Game of Thrones, all things Marvel and I’m a huge fan of Dr Who.  So, I suppose fantasy rates fairly high.  I think it’s the escapism that I en joy, or the fact that there are other worlds out there with worse problems than ours!

Most of the time trying to explain someone else's plot seems a fairly second-rate exercise when we can get it straight from the horse’s mouth. So perhaps you could give us all a brief rundown on Neekra’s story without giving anything vital away.

I’m very much character driven in my writing, and I’ve enjoyed watching Neekra develop.  I’m so happy that she’s not yet another feisty heroine!  But then she doesn’t have to compete with the men in her world, because in her world everyone is equal.  She is very slight in build, but her grace and speed have helped her win many sword-fights against far bigger, stronger opponents, both men and women.  And she lives to fight, so she loves every minute of it.  She’s also passionate about the ways of the Forest and would give her life to defend it.  I could write pages about Neekra, but I’d better stop there.

I’ve already said how the whole idea of world building has always fascinated me, and I’ve been somewhat in awe of those who can truly manage it. It’s both a huge responsibility and a great thrill, I think. How did you go about creating your own particular world and within that are there any particular rules you think you need to bear in mind?

Inspiration for Jackie's Yuke trees - the life blood of Langrinia

I’m very much a panster.  That means I start writing and let the story come gushing out – mostly all over the place!  But I learn about my world as I write.  I’ve discovered that Langrinia is an island protected by fierce one-way currents and high cliffs.  It’s covered in thick forest, apart from a tiny patch at the tip, where generations of refugee Rebels have lived.  Sword-fighting is a way of life.  Going to the yard for a fight is like going down the pub.  They hunt with bows and arrows.

But, in a land covered in forest, where does the iron come from to make swords and arrows?  Where are the mines?  I realised that there aren’t any.  But they do have a very special tree, called the yuke.  Yukes are massive and grow high above the treeline, reaching their branches over the Forest.  Their wood matures to such hardness, its swords could match an iron sword any day, while being much lighter and sharp as a razor.

 

I spend a lot of time in my world, (which means I stare into space and bump into things rather a lot) – and I absolutely love it there.  So, my ‘rule’ would be to keep asking yourself questions about your world and go live there to find the answers – while trying not to bump into things. 

Let’s talk about influences. Who are the world builders you admire and why? Who are both the older and more modern fantasy writers we should seek out and why?

Jackie finds inspiration while walking her dog in the woods.

As soon as you say ‘world building’ I think Game of Thrones.  Whatever you say about his writing, George R R  Martin knows how to build a world.  Tolkein’s Middle Earth is beautifully realised.  Philip Pullman’s alternative Oxford, the world of Harry Potter, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, to name but a few. 

Now you’re probably best known for your Dougal Daley books and he couldn’t be more different from Neekra in The Sword of Red. What’s the difference in feeling with these characters? I suspect most of us have an inner Dougal for example.

I’m sure many of us have an inner Neekra as well!  As well as being character driven, I also very much go with the flow.  I had no idea that Dougal was funny until a publisher said how much they liked my humour.  I wondered whether my fantasy would be humorous, but it most definitely isn’t!  However, with the two being so different, it means I can work on them both at the same time.  When I need a rest from one, I can work on the other.

In a recent interview you said, I thought very honestly, that the best advice you would give an aspiring writer, apart from read and read and read, would be to forget the idea of approaching a publisher as soon as your book is finished.  Instead you should go away and have a full life, before returning to it much later and imagining your worst enemy has written it. Has it been a struggle with you finding and continuing to find people interested in your work?

I think it’s a huge struggle for everyone.  Not only in finding a publisher, but in staying published.  So, I would always say to rest your work and go over it again before submitting – although once published and subjected to deadlines, that’s not always easy.

Now The Sword of Red has an array of fascinating characters, all of whom I thoroughly enjoy. You’ve said that you start something by having the character first. Are there any characters in the story who you feel particularly close to, or proud of. How did they come about?

I dream them.  I live in my world and meet them.  Sometimes I see someone in the street who looks like one of my characters and have to be very careful not to stare at them.  For me, there is no greater pleasure than living with my characters, whether they make me laugh or cry.  Or scream.  I’ve come across a few of those in Langrinia.  But my favourite character’s journey starts in the second book of the quartet, so I can’t say anything about why without a spoiler!

The essential conflict in Sword of Red concerns the protagonist Neekra needing to have the antagonist Pool as an ally in order to save the Forest. Is a situation where someone is forced to do something they wouldn’t normally consider, something that appeals to you?

Being a panster, I let the story come splurging out and only then do I discover all these themes, mostly because my readers spot them.  You’ve summed Neekra’s particular conflict up very well for me, so thank you!  (and yes, now you mention it, it does appeal.)

Finally, I obviously should ask you if there are going to be more stories. I certainly hope there are.

The Sword of Red is the first of four.  I actually wrote the fourth book, The Swordmaker, first, as a standalone.   But it had such a massive back-story I had to write a prequel.  But that had such a massive back-story, I had to write a prequel to that.  The Sword of Red is the prequel to that book, and where the story begins.  That’s what comes from being a panster, I suppose.

Thanks Jackie, for sharing your thoughts with me and abba readers.

You are welcome, thank you for having me.

The Sword of Red is Published by BLKDOG, as an e-book and POD.  Available from Amazon. 

NB After what turned to be only a brief absence I'm ple ased to say that I've been inveigled back into the abba fold by a promise of virtual cake. I'll be here from 16th next month to continue interviewing as many writers as I can persuade to join me. My theme will be Writers and their Landscape, beginning with Sue Purkiss herself - she who inveigled me with the cake in the first place. I'll be looking forward to talking to all manner of writers in the next few months, including the Lady of Stonewylde herself, Kit Berry, Canada-based US author, Scott Telek, creator of The Swithen, a  vast, psychologically astute and above all brilliantly realised new entry in the Arthurian corpus, with twenty more volumes to come, and Ellen Caldecott, about her unique new novel The Short Knife, which also explores and celebrates the evolution of the language of these isles. But, returning to the theme of landscape, I have a feeling we might be hearing more from Jackie and Neekra's world of Langrinia, between the cliffs and the forest.

Steve Gladwin - Story Magic

Concept, Creation, Editing and Enhancement

Author of 'The Seven', 'Fragon Tales' and 'The Raven's Call'

​T​elephone 01938 500728 Mobile 07485 007189

One Ring To Rule Them All by Steve Gladwin

Rather than make comparisons between the radio version and the 2001 film franchise, in the spirit of the fellowship of nine, I'm going to give you nine reasons to listen to or buy the BBC radio version of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, especially - for god's sake, if you haven't heard it. So here goes.

Sir Ian in signing mode.

A Tale of Two Sir Ians


Long before his moving film portrayal of a confused Bilbo, Sir Ian Holm really was Frodo in the BBC radio adaptation and I mean was. I could enthuse about his performance forever but I'd better not. But he's the lynch pin of the radio adaptation and does everything that's required not only with consummate ease but with subtlety, pacing and intelligence to spare. His relationship with Sam with all its ups and downs is just wonderful, and almost unbearably moving in the Shelob and Dark Tower scenes. Sam sounds the right age to Bilbo as well, which is not of course so in the film where Sean Astin's Sam often seems more like an uncle, (or maybe Tolkien's batman!)

Bilbo muses.

Two more Great Theatrical Knights

Gandalf played by Sir Michael Hordern

Long before twinkling, absent-minded Ian McKellen came the arch harrumpher and friend of Paddington Bear, Sir Michael Hordern, now perhaps forgotten as he never, ever should be. For those who only remember him as befuddled dons, stuff upper-lipped admirals and  grumpy old men, listen when his Gandalf gets loses his patience, when its a wonder Pippin doesn't jump straight down the well. He can also do absent minded as convincingly as if Paddington has suddenly taken on a rather odd adventure. And of course he has real gravitas, the voice thrills and tugs at the heart. Above all Gandalf must be a great storyteller and Michael Hordern certainly is, (see Paddington!)

Sir Michael troubled by a haunted bed sheet in M.R. James 'Whistle and I'll come to you.' for the Beeb

Aragorn played by Sir Robert Stephens

Private life with violin.

In the light of the 'best in show' turn by Viggo Mortensen in the film franchise, it's maybe less easy to appreciate the wonderful oak preserved, tanned leather voice of Sir Robert Stephens as Aragorn and I have friends who think he is completely miscast and works far better as Abner Brown in The Box of Delights. For me he'll always be a much under-rated Sherlock Holmes' in Billy Wilder's odd, quirky, at times frankly barking, but deeply moving The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but as the never seen version of Aragorn he's got everything. It's that same seasoned voice that makes him both perfect ageless king elect and a convincing ranger. You can imagine him pulling off his boots after a days's trudge and lighting up his pipe, and because the king is incognito for a lot of the time, it gives him all the more eventual gravitas. Plus we have none of that pesky added on romance stuff with Awen to guarantee box office.

Robert Stephen's Falstaff with Joanne Pearce as Doll.

A chilling Hades in Jim Henson's Greek Myths

As Abner Brown in The Box of Delights

Max from Inspector Morse

Peter Woodthorpe, who offered to make it three times in a row with Gollum.

With Peter Woodthorpe as Gollum. Those five words alone are a reason to listen . And yes, Peter Woodthorpe did play Max, the hunchbacked police surgeon and Morse's only real mate in the eponymous TV series, but he also appeared as Estragon in the very first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and there's an awful lot of Beckett still to be found in his Gollum.

Towards the end of his life Peter Woodthorpe related how he wrote to Peter Jackson to offer his services as Gollum for the third time, (having first played it in the Ralph Bakshi animated half ring version!. As we all know, Peter Jackson already had intriguing plans involving actor - and soon to be groundbreaking motion capture artist Andy Serkis, but as Jackson is a huge fan of the BBC adaptation and of Peter Woodthorpes's Gollum, he was glad of the chance to let him down gently.

Gollum is of course a complex character - not to say a schizophrenic one- and Peter Woodthorpe captures every nuance of the tormented hobbit's complex personality morals and loyalties. During his many scenes with Frodo and Sam, Peter Woodthorpe shows the full heart-breaking depth of the character's deception, his calumny, the loyalties of Smeagol driven friendship struggling against his evil Gollum soured opportunism. Listen to the scene where the two parts are first vying for control after Frodo releases the suppressed Smeagol half in the Dead Marshes. Peter Woodthorpe does every part of it through voice alone - and it's the moves from one to the other which really display his unique vocal skills.

Bill long after he was Sam Gamgee as washed out rocker Ray in Still Crazy

One Sam To Rule Them All

Believe it or not, but long before Bill Nighy displayed the power of his pipes as Ray the washed up prog rocker in Brian Gibson's Clement and Le Frenais scripted Still Crazy he had given us his voice in unaccompanied and far more plaintive mood. The moment before the attack on Weathertop when he sings 'Gil galad was an Elven King' is a true pin-drop moment.

His Sam is simply wonderful and has all the youth that Sean Astin, (by far the oldest of the film hobbit company) lacks. This Sam will lay down his life for his master without thinking and there is real loyalty and love between the two, (as to be fair there is between Sean Astin and Elijah Wood's Sam and Frodo). But something special happens when Sir Ian and Bill get together. And then when you add Peter Woodthorpe to the mix?. At best Bill Nighy's Sam can be wrenching and heart-breaking. But like his master he is always 100% believable.


Stephen Oliver

The multi-talented Stephen Oliver

Stephen Oliver was a multi talented musician and composer of 40 operas and early music specialist who died far too young of an AIDS related illness in 1992. He was commissioned to write the music for the radio series of The Lord of the Rings. He was no stranger to huge undertakings but this truly was a huge canvas to control and master.

A couple of years ago an elderly neighbour of ours described going to see the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring., He had to leave the cinema because very quickly he found the constant sweeping soundtrack too intrusive and more to the point, it hurt his ears.

I do love Howard Shore's extensive film score, with its epic grandeur and use of leit motifs and have a great many favourite moment, like the all too short section of the halls of the Dwarrowdelf in Moria. Shore evokes that cathedral like mixture of grandeur and regret in a way which is truly heart tugging and there is some absolutely wonderful stuff which captures everything necessary and more.

But the book is full of songs and poems Apart from Frodo's disastrous party piece in Bree, nobody really sings in the film and if they do it is apologetically, so people end up saying, 'Ooh, look, Viggo Mortensen can sing, after all.' Others are just drowned by the constant music.

But Bill Nighy can sing. And the chorus of assembled Ents can. And long before he became a wine critic, so could Oz Clarke as the voice of The Bard. And then there's acclaimed counter tenor David James and Baritone Matthew Vine as Lothlorien and the Eagle and the Dream Voice. Later John le Mesurier was recorded singing Bilbo's last song and how suitably weary and earth-trodden it sounds. You can hear it as part of the hour long soundtrack on youtube. But what Stephen Oliver does in contrast to Howard Shore's approach is give us a soundtrack for an epic story, rather than a soundtrack for a film, something more suitable for a Saxon feasting hall - which would of course been much far more up Tolkien's street.

Brian Sibley

Brian Sibley has written, adapted and collaborated on so many things it shouldn't be any surprise that his later role as Mr Movie Tie in, (Rings, Hobbit, Potter just for starters), not to mention as Peter Jackson's official biographer. comes in an impressive direct line from adapting the subject of this blog and before that the BBC Narnia chronicles and latterly Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. He also wrote the wonderful book Shadowlands, about the elderly CS Lewis's relationship with Joy Davidman.

Of course Brian Sibley adapted the series with Michael Bakewell, who must of course share the credit for so powerful, moving and above all beautifully structured a dramatisation.

Sometimes Eccentric Casting

There are a great many other actors in this version apart from the leads and several of the the established BBC radio drama stalwarts appear not only in name parts but in the 'also starring' list at the end of each episode. It would be nice to give them all a credit here, but the list, as you'd imagine, is extensive.

The two younger hobbits can be a little middle class and too wide eyed with wonder, but are fine nonetheless. David Collings has the right voice for Legolas, as has Michael Graham Cox the suitably gruff tones for the disappointed Boromir and Douglas Livingstone is the best Gimli you'll ever hear. Then there's the late great actor Peter Vaughan, with a career spanning all the way through to his final role as Maester Aemon in Game of Thrones, as the bitter and Palantir maddened Denethor, but who we all remembered at the time as Genial Harry Grout, Fletch's nemesis in Porridge, and Andrew Sear as his son Faramir. We also have Simon Cadell sounding every inch the stiff upper lip elf in his cameo as Celeborn, (to Marian Diamond's gentle Galadriel).

Jack May and John Le Mesurier as Theoden and Bilbo respectively may be more of an acquired taste. Jack May, famous for his old ham role of Nelson Gabriel in the early days of The Archers, starts with a very thick slice of it, before settling down into more of a neatly sliced version. Its speeches that seem to bring out the worst of the old tendency, so he's far better in his dialogues with Gandalf or when Peter Howell's marvellously voiced Saruman, (here is a wizard whose gentle tones could surely lull us for long enough to lure us).

I like John Le Mesurier as the old Bilbo, but I can understand how others might not. Part of the problem is his type-casting in our memories as Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army. Every time he comes in you expect him to say 'Do you think that's wise, Frodo?' But after you get over the initial shock, his portrayal becomes as heartfelt at Ian Holm's once we get to Rivendell. 

I also shouldn't forget Stephen Thorne's wonderful Treebeard, Paul Brooke's wheedling Wormtongue or Philip Voss as the Voice of Sauron. And then there's Inspector Morse's future boss James Grout as a wonderfully befuddled Barliaman Butterbur.

Two hobbits and a wizard rather eccentric advert from the Radio Times in 1981.

Audio Narration

In 1991 I took a group of Performing Arts students to Grimsby Leisure Centre to see the RSC's touring company's production of Shakespeare's . A Winter's Tale. Before the performance, two hundred or so school and college students were given the chance to hear the actor Gerard Murphy talk about playing the role of Leontes. At the end we addressed questions to him. To fairly amazed looks from my students I asked him what it had been like working with all those wonderful actors as the narrator in the BBC Radio Lord of the Rings. His clearly rather dazed reply was that he had been very young then and didn't remember much.

Recently I've realised that it was a rather stupid question, (neither the first or last!). Of course he didn't see them because a narration track would be done separately and likely added later.

But it isn't Gerard Murphy's creditable narration that for me provides the final emerald in the crown of this 1981 jewel.
Instead it is what I have chosen to call the audio narration - for which I should probably say direction. Generally the words of an author rarely survive without the surrounding superstructure of plot and character, which are a big part of what radio as a medium does so well. A director like Jane Morgan or Penny Leicester would have had to rely on the surrounding part , what screen writing tutors often call 'theme', that which is essentially narration done by actors, music and effects. There are too many instances of this but try the fellowships's impossible attempt to master Caradhras and reach the Redhorn Gate, and then follow it with the closed in echoing ambience of the Mines of Moria. Then there's the music and combined atmospherics which tell you that on entering Lothlorien you're in a whole different world, one different even from the earlier, far more human influenced and welcoming Last Homely House of Elrond. Take in the eerie strings of Frodo, Sam and Gollum's passage through the dead marshes, or the early horror that surrounds Frodo with the black breath at Weathertop moments after Bill Nighy's Sam has almost inadvertently welcomed in the Black Riders through his singing of the words 'in Mordor where the shadows are.'  in the Lay of Gil-galad.

Whether you listen to it all in a thirteen hour stint, or take it a book at a time, or like I am currently, on one of Audible's one hour plus stretches, you cannot help but be fully immersed and variously chilled, awed or simply blissed out by the full experience of the BBC's magnificent aural experience. And of course, it hardly needs saying that you get to paint the landscape of the perilous journey yourself from green, safe and settled Hobbiton to the wastelands of Mordor and the slopes of Mount Doom.

Hiraeth by Steve Gladwin

This month, to celebrate my two year anniversary as an abba blogger, (I know. Doesn’t it?) I’ve decided to do something different. For once I’m not going to waffle on but invite you, the reader, to use what follows as a reflection space. I hope that in doing so you will be able to find just a little bit of quiet in your every day and it might then encourage you to do more of the same and grab a few more opportunities than you usually do.

Before I do that however,  I need to talk about the Welsh concept of Hiraeth.

Hiraeth is one of those indefinable words – impossible to actually pin down and yet we know its essence when the word is both spoken and described to us. It is variously - longing, yearning, seeking or wishing to recapture someone or something which has gone. There are correlations with similar words and definitions in other languages, but being more of an instinctive person than a wikipedia one, I prefer to leave it to the individual. 

My own first experience of Hiraeth was rather an odd one. A few months before I moved from Somerset to Wales, I attended a friend’s book launch in Glastonbury. I bought a copy of his book and made like a fan so he could sign it. What he wrote in it was this.

‘Lift high the cup of Hiraeth.’

He doesn’t remember writing it, or where the inspiration to do so came from, but long before I knew the word, those few words of John's had managed to convey and even predict the future I would have when I moved here to Meifod and the beautiful Vyrnwy Valley – an ever changing web of inspiration and sadness, beauty and loss.

I love Wales and especially the place I live, but it is often hard. Sometimes that’s just how it is – the places we love are those that most challenge us. I remember standing by the bridge when I first arrived and wondering where the sadness I was feeling was coming from. When I found out about the concept of Hiraeth, it all began to make sense.

The myths and stories of Wales are full of sadness of course. In one of the most famous, the story of Branwen, Daughter of Lir, the second ‘branch’ of the collection called the Mabinogi, there is a famous sequence involving a singing head. Essentially, Bran’s disembodied head keeps the only seven survivors of a great battle both entertained and enchanted for over eighty years, until one of them Heiliyn Gwyn, opens the door to the West. In doing so he lets in not just the natural elements but the power and sadness of all the terrible memories that the enchantment has so far held at bay.

Perhaps there is nothing quite so sad as a good spell that has been prematurely broken, especially if the reasons for casting it in the first place have been kindly and therapeutic. We cannot unmake the past and our sadness no matter how much we might wish to. Only the arts are able to do this and perhaps in doing so, gift us with a therapeutic base on which to build our future. Literature is full of sadness and occasionally there are places where the sad and those not quite healed of their griefs and the horrors and traumas they have witnessed, can go. I wonder whether Tolkien was aware of the concept of Hiraeth because in The Grey Havens he surely provided a place where the ring bearers, as well as the retiring elves, might be able to escape from it.

And so much of music too, in all its forms and varieties, is about sadness, about relationships failing and unrequited love. At the beginning of the film of Nick Hornby’s, High Fidelity, Rob, the main character played by John Cusack, reflects on whether parents ever really understand just how dangerous it might be to allow their children to listen to all that stuff about love and death. The answer, I suppose, is that of course they do, as they probably did the same thing themselves.

Maybe there is something to be said for such a form of therapeutic sadness, exposing us all to the ideas from an early age through the eyes and minds of others, so that by the time we come to realise it for ourselves, we will be that much readier. And of course that's what you find in so many fairy and traditional tales, and why it is all the more vital that children continue to read and engage with them.

This time last year I posted about my partner and her on-going struggles and about how this connected with the futurelearn course I was doing on mental health in literature. I was very moved by the many responses, but even gladder to share people’s recommendations for poetry which reflected the many aspects of this, and how they felt. It was the power of poetry which on that one occasion most helped Rosie and which, I have read - time and time again – has done the same for others.

So here are a few pictures of the place where I live in Wales, and where the gift of Hiraeth is sometimes overwhelming.  Perhaps you can think of some lines of poetry which any of these images remind you of, or you might simply take the space to reflect on the idea of Hiraeth and maybe with it the places, people or memories which particularly tug at you.

Of course it might also encourage you to dig through your own photo collection and find the ones which most evoke such feelings and maybe some poetry which goes with it.  Thanks everyone for the last two years and I'm looking forward to more.

​

Steve Gladwin - 'Grove of Seven' and 'The Year in Mind'

Writer, Performer and Teacher

Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call'

www.stevegladwin.co.uk

JANUARY'S AUTHOR by Sharon Tregenza

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa on the 3rd of January 1892.

He spent most of his earliest years in Africa and an incident when he was bitten by a tarantula is reported to have influenced his later work. His father, Arthur Tolkien, was an English banker who died of rheumatic fever after his family had left to return to England. This meant the grieving family had to struggle on a limited income.

An avid reader, Tolkien was influenced by some of the great writers of the time like G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells.

He contracted trench fever in World War 1 and in 1917 was sent back to England to recuperate. That was the end of Tolkien's war service and the beginning of his writing career. He'd begun to create his own language based on Finnish and Welsh and a mythology to support it. This is the work that eventually resulted in his famous books.

He'd married Edith Bratt in 1916 and about this time the first of his four children was born. He continued his mythology while a professor at the University of Leeds.

"The Hobbit" came out in 1936.

Tolkien was now a professor at Oxford. The story goes that he was grading exam papers one evening, opened an exam booklet and found the first-page blank. It seemed like an invitation to write and he famously scribbled "in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".

The finished manuscript arrived at the desk of the publishers Allen and Unwin. Unwin paid his ten-year-old son a shilling to read it. Luckily the boy loved the story and "The Hobbit" soon became a best seller.

In the late 1930's Tolkien began writing "Lord of the Rings"

It was published in three parts and the trilogy also became a massive publishing success.

Five interesting facts about Tolkien's work:

1. He used just two fingers to type the whole of the 1,200 pages of text for the books.

2. Christopher Tolkien, his son, didn't like the "Lord of the Rings" books.

3. Although Tolkien said that the books could be seen as a reference to historical events - they weren't intended to be allegorical.

4. Christopher Lee, who played Saruman in the films, had read the "Lord of the Rings" every year for over forty years.

5. The Beatles tried to make a film of "Lord of the Rings" starring themselves but Tolkien wasn't keen. That would have been a very different film. 

Email: sharontregenza@gmail.com

Website: www.sharontregenza.com

Twitter: @sharontregenza