Illustrated Blog Posts

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion is full of heartbreak and darkness. Some readers have told me they even find it difficult to get through. But here and there, the author gives us glimpses of such sublime beauty that one may have to put the book down, just to try to absorb what Tolkien is describing. Tuor in the Rainbow Cleft is just such a scene, and it was like working with a golden paintbrush and paint made of jewels creating this new depiction. I am in such sympathy with

This is the definition of a red letter day! Christie's has just posted notice of the upcoming auction of a previously-unknown letter of J.R.R Tolkien's, written on February 28th, 1966, to a Miss Jenny Hall of Hillcrest, Hatfield, Herts. I am so grateful to my friend, Graeme Cheadle, for bringing my attention to this letter, and it's hard to imagine a topic that would delight me more, because this missive solves the great mystery of what Sam Gamgee's cousin Hal saw on his hunt

War is the thief of beauty in the world. As is told in J.R.R. Tolkien's Letter Number 340 to his son Christopher: "I never called Edith Lúthien — but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while.) In those days he

As readers, we never get to climb a flet in Lothlórien to see Galadriel and her weavers crafting the grey cloth of which they make their enchanted cloaks and the glimmering hithlain rope that comes to the aid of the Fellowship, but we know such a place exists and that such activities are happening there. This is one of those glorious glimpses J.R.R. Tolkien gives us into the richness and depth of Middle-earth that turn sketches into detailed pictures of life, customs, culture