A recent discussion with Carl Lingard on the nature of Tolkien’s “secret grammar” led to the question of whether Plato’s teaching on the soul might be mapped onto what Lingard calls ‘Tolkien’s Dialectic’.1 In Plato’s understanding, the soul is made up of three “parts”; reason, will, and appetite. These correspond respectively to the head, the [...]
It is somewhat surprising, given the popularity of Tolkien’s works, that relatively little attention has been paid to some of the supplementary artwork for The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. Among the more intriguing pieces produced by the author are the heraldic designs for the various Elven houses. To my mind, no one [...]
Owen Barfield was a member of the Oxford Inklings, alongside J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, a writer, poet, and devotee of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. He is seldom talked about except by academics, yet he had a great impact on the writing of his friends, and his own considerable creative efforts merit attention. His one unpublished [...]
My debut novel is now available in paperback and ebook via Amazon - order a copy today! In this Kafkaesque, escapist, adventure story, Joseph K, a young lawyer, arrives at the mysterious and perplexing Postlethwaite Estate – a world unto itself, governed by ancient traditions and a host of eccentric and comic characters.K must learn [...]
Charles Williams is a much overlooked figure in literature; of the trio of Williams, Lewis and Tolkien who were arguably the most notable of the inklings, he is least well known, despite a prolific output in a range of areas from Theology to literary criticism, and in forms ranging from the biography and the thriller [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, responding to comparisons between The Lord of the Rings and Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, that: ‘Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceased.’ Clearly the comparison irked him, the inventor of a truly unique work of creative genius, but his response seems overly dismissive and simplistic at best. This essay [...]
Steps to Taniquetil 