This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Catherine and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase a print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Catherine Warr’s responses:

1. How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

I remember the moment very clearly. I hadn’t watched or read anything Tolkien when I was little, and the first time I experienced it was when I was walking round a car boot sale when I was very young, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted the DVD of The Fellowship of the Ring. I hadn’t a clue what it was, but, being interested in knights and castles and all things fantasy, I thought I’d give it a shot. I was hooked immediately.

2. What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

I touch on this in a later question, but the depictions of the Shire and Rohan always were particularly powerful for me. The Shire was quintessential, picture-postcard England, a romanticised, pre-Industrial Arcadia which nevertheless touched on something real. The fight for survival of the Shire always struck me particularly powerfully as I view the same thing to be happening today. I’ve come to appreciate that latter aspect more nowadays, as I’m older. When I was younger, I was obsessed with Rohan – I just loved the aesthetic and how it mirrored the Anglo-Saxons.

Finally, growing up as a tomboy, I was always incredibly grateful for characters like Eowyn who weren’t typical girls, because I could finally relate to her. I hated dolls and dresses and makeup, and whereas most fantasy stories have their female princesses obsessed with exactly that, I was finally happy to have a fictional female character who legitimised my own interests – showing me it was okay for me to want to play with swords.

3. What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

Not an experience per se, but how it influenced me growing up. Every since I can remember, every week my parents took me out to visit a historic house, castle, museum, site of interest etc, and, as kids do, I would often project LOTR onto places I visited. Visiting a forest? I’d imagine epic battles between orcs and Aragorn. Visiting something Anglo-Saxon? That’s straight out of Rohan. LOTR was for a long time my obsession and informed, for a long time, my interpretation of the world. Tolkien’s Shire was the perfect, idealistic vision of the countryside I’d go for rides out in, and it still forms my mental image of perfect England – *my* England.

4. Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

I’ve found that, as I’ve got older, I’ve come to notice and understand the analogies and metaphors in The Lord of the Rings more than when I was a kid. When I was younger, it was just a jolly good fantasy romp. But now, I’ve come to appreciate the deeper meanings. For example, though not explicitly intended by Tolkien, the way characters describe the power of the Ring comes very close to descriptions of the power and effects of sin, and Tolkien’s Catholicism almost might have had something of a subconscious influence on this.

I’ve found his descriptions of the Shire particularly more powerful now, especially with the theme of the destruction of the countryside and ‘old ways’ of life for the purpose of advancements in technology and industry – it’s something I never grasped as a kid.

5. Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

Of course! It formed a huge obsession of mine as a kid and really shaped my interests and activities. LOTR often gets criticised for being too simplistic, too goodies-vs-baddies, in contrast to works like A Song of Ice and Fire. But I think that’s missing the point – we never, for example, say that Beauty and the Beast is unrealistic, because we understand that that was never the point or intention. LOTR is the most magnificent modern expression of the most fundamental theme in world storytelling – of the triumph of good over evil.

You can hear more from Catherine at her YouTube channel: Yorkshire’s Hidden History!

This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Phil and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase a print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Phil Dean‘s responses:

1. How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

Well it’s been the best part of forty years since I discovered Tolkien, so my recollection of this is slightly hazy. I do remember my parents buying me The Lord of the Rings as a gift, and I still have the rather battered and worn remains of these three books to this day – the 1981 Unwin editions, complete with the gorgeous cover art of Pauline Baynes. But I think prior to this I had been enthralled by a copy of The Hobbit I’d borrowed from the school library, attracted by Tolkien’s own marvelously evocative cover painting, which led to me spending an awful lot of time drawing mountain ranges of my own!

2. What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

I’d have to say The Lord of the Rings. Because it’s such a lengthy tale, you get to immerse yourself in Middle-earth for such a long time, to the point where I find it really rather depressing to have to leave it at the end. I’ll try and find time to read it every year or two, and I never enjoy it any less for knowing it so well. But I find The Silmarillion to be a jaw-droppingly awesome piece of work, one which I’ve learnt to appreciate more and more the older I get. This is the real heart of Tolkien’s work, and it is a truly astonishing achievement. And I feel like it would be remiss of me not to mention “Leaf By Niggle,” a little work of genius which I think gives us a very insightful look at Tolkien himself.

3. What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

This is going to perhaps sound rather heretical to some, but spending a day at Hobbiton in New Zealand was amazing. I know that of course in reality it’s simply a movie set, but I loved Peter Jackson’s movies and – for good or bad – his superb visual representation of many of the locations in The Lord of the Rings have become embedded in my mind, and many others. Having an ale in The Green Dragon was brilliant, but standing outside Bag End brought a tear to my eye. “In a hole in the ground their lived a hobbit” – and there I was actually standing outside the front door of that hole. Sure, it’s not really that hole, but it felt like it was. I’ve travelled a lot and visited countless historical marvels, but this felt as real as any of them to me.

4. Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Yes, very much so. First and foremost I love the stories for what they are – great stories, and that hasn’t changed at all. And I’ve always loved reading mythology and history, so I was able to appreciate what a great work The Silmarillion was outside of the stories themselves. But it wasn’t until I started listening to the podcasts of the Tolkien Professor (Corey Olsen) five or six years ago that I truly began to understand Tolkien’s work on a deeper level. Olsen revealed so many layers that I’d been hitherto unaware of, and it felt like I discovered the books all over again. Realising that Bombadil was actually speaking in a sort of accentual Anglo-Saxon verse blew my mind!

5. Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

Absolutely I would – at least to a certain type of person. Tolkien is one of the best writers at connecting us to something buried deep inside, to a world of faerie, of fantasy. To something other than everyday existence. I think the human mind needs this, and is much poorer when bereft of it. It is perhaps the one place we’re truly free. Of course many people are not going to read about elves or hobbits regardless of how good the story is, and that’s just fine – there are many other gateways to walk through!

You can find much more from Phil Dean on his website!

This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Paul and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase a print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Paul Wulfrun’s responses:

1. How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

My Father (who had also read Tolkien as a child) bought me a fourth edition copy of The Hobbit from a thrift shop in our local area when I was around 6 years of age. It was old, a little beaten up, but it was the first book I ever owned that smelled like an actual book!

On that note, I would like to thank Craig Holland from 7C (as it states on the first page of my copy) for donating your book and giving me years of good reading since. This very week I have begun reading it to my two children for the first time and I hope that they find it as magical and enthralling as I did.

2. What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

His ability to weave a story that seems ageless and wide. Even in his smaller works such as ‘Smith of Wootton Major’, through a mere 16 pages he crafts a world you can visualise and immerse yourself within.

Then, to truly craft a universe, he builds history and bloodlines, ties characters from the past to those of present day, allowing their tales to be woven into a tapestry equal to the epics of Indo-European mythology.

One of his many goals was to make a universe that felt commonplace within the history of our own and I believe he achieved this better than any author to date.

3. What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

The first time I heard Tolkien recite elvish for the first time. Specifically, ‘Namárië’ (more commonly known as ‘Farewell to Lorien’) whose lines are given to Galadriel within the texts.

Any time I hear elvish recited properly (be it Sindarin, Quenyan, Noldorin, etc) it is truly a beautiful and profound experience. Howard Shore’s fantastic soundscape for the films brought it to a whole new level.

As an aside, visiting a Tolkien Moot and a trip to New Zealand are two experiences sitting readily on my Bucket list!

4. Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Being young when I was first entrenched into the world of Tolkien, my first reads focussed on the drama, the quicker paced areas surrounding war and battle. Now that I am older, I love sitting within the words of each paragraph, delving into them to understand the knowledge, pretence and prophecy that they hold within the story. The minds of Hammond, Scull, Olsen, Shippey and many more have allowed me to acquire further meaning and I love diving ever deeper into his mythos. To the point where I almost love The Silmarillion more than the main work.

I also love to collect quotes, of which the one I have chosen to ponder this week is;

Do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Numenor. – Faramir

5. Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

As a teacher and educator, I always find myself recommending Tolkien’s works for one reason or another.

The Hobbit is a fantastic introduction to greater fiction for primary readers, with many of his lesser works adding to the library of resources that can be utilised to study English and writing. His works are so wonderfully crafted that all of them can scale accordingly for any year level.

From a personal point of view, I want people to read his work so I can discuss it with them, to inspire and give a story of hope within a masterfully crafted fantasy setting the likes of which we more than likely will not ever see again.