3,018 words
The singer Édith Piaf famously, and throatily, regretted nothing about anything. But the poet John Betjeman wished that he’d had more sex. And the economist John Maynard Keynes that he’d drunk more champagne. Me? I regret two things much more important than recreational sex or champagne. (more…)
“Off with her head!” An original illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1864)
“Off with her head!” An original illustration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1864)
7,655 words
The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree.
— D. H. Lawrence
A question, readers: what is the most profound of all human activities? With the previous sentence, I’ve already provided the answer, for it is the question itself — the thing that drives all exploration and philosophy. How can philosophy (or any knowledge) exist without first the riddle, the profound need for the answer? (more…)
500 words
“I am in fact a Hobbit.”—J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a favorite author of New Left “hippies” and New Right nationalists, and for pretty much the same reasons. Tolkien deeply distrusted modernization and industrialization, which replace organic reciprocity between man and nature with technological dominion of man over nature, a relationship that deforms and devalues both poles. (more…)
1.469 ord
En af mine foretrukne dele af Ringenes Herre er Sjette Bog, kapitel 8, ”Rengøring i Herredet”, det næstsidste kapitel i Kongen vender Tilbage. (more…)
Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page (right), Chicago, 1977.
Robert Plant (left) and Jimmy Page (right), Chicago, 1977.
2,100 words
Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair
— “Going to California”
Led Zeppelin’s back catalog already includes songs like “Ramble On” from the rocky Led Zeppelin II and the melancholic classic “Tangerine” from the flower-powered III. (more…)
3,323 words
3,323 words
Owen Barfield
History in English Words
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1926
In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.
— Owen Barfield (more…)
185 words / 59:55
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Greg Johnson talks to Morgoth of Morgoth’s Review on the web, Bitchute, and YouTube about White Nationalist culture jamming, the Eternal Anglo vs. Tolkienism, Arts & Crafts, and Aestheticism, Roger Scruton, whiteness in classical and pop music, the 2019 UK General Election, (more…)
1,480 words
Tolkien world experienced two huge events this month.
Amazon announced last week the diverse cast for its new Lord of the Rings series. Shortly thereafter, Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s editor and the guardian of his father’s legacy, died. (Hopefully, there was no connection between the events.) (more…)
1,287 words
“Few now remember them . . . yet still some go wandering, sons of forgotten kings walking in loneliness, guarding from evil things folks that are heedless.” (Tom Bombadil, “Fog on the Barrow Downs,” The Fellowship of the Ring)
In memory of Christopher Tolkien (more…)
Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien
760 words
J. R. R. Tolkien’s youngest son, Christopher, died on January 15 at the age of 95. Even in old age, Christopher cut a striking scholarly figure, sitting as he did in a green cardigan before a log fire. His reedy voice, occasionally crackling like the dry wood in the stone hearth at his feet, carrying with it subtle wisps of academic gravitas, as smoky shadows curled like grey-blue snakes around a towering bookcase filled with leather-bound tomes (more…)
Arthur Rackham, Alberich and the Rhine Maidens, 1910-1911
Arthur Rackham, Alberich and the Rhine Maidens, 1910-1911
1,323 words
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?
— Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass (more…)
2,268 words
“Tolkien knows more about Chaucer than any living man.” — John Masefield, Poet Laureate (1930-67)
John M. Bowers’ book Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (Oxford 2019) finally puts paid to the recently concocted mythology propagated in spurious articles like The Telegraph’s September 2009 piece “J.R.R. Tolkien Trained as a British Spy” and Elansea’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Codemaker, Spy-Master, Hero: An Un-Authorized Biography (2015), that the creator of Middle-Earth was some kind of tweed-jacketed Indiana Jones, (more…)