The Welsh media have shown great interest in Festival in the Shire! Yesterday’s Western Mail included the article “Tolkien festival to be held in Middle Wales” in which I was quoted, together with the Mark Faith, the man behind the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Many of you will have heard about the closure of all Humanities courses at the Cardiff Centre for Lifelong Learning last July. These developments left a great number of students disappointed but now there is a new educational institution to…
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 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…
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…