Happy 91st birthday to Susan Cooper, author of the incredible Dark Is Rising fantasy sequence and a worthy heir to #Tolkien. Read all about her extraordinary work in my latest blog post. tinyurl.com/susancooper #susancooper #darkisrising @mythsoc.bsky.social @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social

Middle-earth was born in a meeting of minds – and I'm proud to be part of a pioneering new book about this most formative of Tolkien's early friendships. bit.ly/jrrt-gbs #Tolkien #GBSmith #poetry #myth @stuartdlee.bsky.social

Latest edition of @thetolkienist.com's essential #Tolkien news – for fans and scholars alike. Read and subscribe!

In this quite possibly longest edition of the newsletter... @johngarthwriter.bsky.social, @miriamellis.bsky.social, @mgcoco.bsky.social, @tolkiensociety.org, @dimitrafimi.bsky.social, @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social, @medievalists.bsky.social, @riseupcomus.bsky.social, @archive.org and more...

There are discomforts as well as delights in unexpectedly meeting your own work reflected back at you. My book TOLKIEN AND THE GREAT WAR has brought me a few of both. Read how at my blog… steady.page/en/john-gart... #tolkien #ww1

Introducing the two Tolkien courses I'll be leading for this year's Inspiring Oxford summer school! Please share. People often say they'd love to study with me. Let's make sure this reaches them. www.youtube.com/shorts/5-PBh... Course link: lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/tutors/7333 #Tolkien #Oxford

I just finished John Garth’s brilliant biography of J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War. This gem of a book opens a window into the wartime life of Middle Earth’s creator. Highly recommended! #booksky #milsky #fwwhist #JRRTolkien #LotR #LordoftheRings #Hobbit @johngarthwriter.bsky.social

I remember reading this wonderful book in the last semester of my undergrad. For me, it was a quasi-personal way to link with WWI experience: and author I'd read deeply, including letters and biography, and now I was following his experience of hell.

"I think I may have found a handwritten calendar for the start of #Tolkien’s work for the @OED," I told my friend @petermgilliver.bsky.social at the Oxford English Dictionary. Now the article we wrote on it is shortlisted in the 2026 Tolkien Society Awards 🧵1/4 www.tolkiensociety.org/2026/04/vote...

If you want to walk in #Tolkien's shoes, listen to me reading my audiobook of Tolkien and the Great War – "one of the best books about friendship, war, and the formation and nature of a genius". This and other reviews here: audible.co.uk/pd/Tolkien-a... #WW1 #genius #friendship #war

It's #TolkienReadingDay! So how well do YOU really know The Lord of the Rings? Pit your wits against my quiz, originally commissioned by BBC Arts Digital but now with extra questions. ▶︎ tinyurl.com/lotr-toughes... #Tolkien #LotR #trivia #quiz

It's #TolkienReadingDay! So how well do YOU really know The Lord of the Rings? Pit your wits against my quiz, originally commissioned by BBC Arts Digital but now with extra questions. ▶︎ tinyurl.com/lotr-toughes... #Tolkien #LotR #trivia #quiz

‘Going west’ was a new #English phrase for dying as #WW1 raged. It's thought to tap right back #Celtic #mythology. But did it help to shape Tolkien’s wartime idea that the souls of the dead go into the West? Read all about it – and support my work. tinyurl.com/gowesttolkien #Tolkien

War changes everything, including language. Did you know "to go west", meaning "to die", entered English as WW1 soldier slang? Read how it resurrected an idea of death from ancient myth. At my blog (written before yesterday's news). No paywall. tinyurl.com/gowestWW1 #WW1 #language #myth #Tolkien

In The Times Literary Supplement this week, I review two landmark books about Tolkien‘s work: Michael D. C. Drout’s “unexpectedly moving” The Tower and the Ruin and Giuseppe Pezzini‘s ”exemplary study” Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation. www.the-tls.com/literature-b... @TheTLS #tolkien

I'm an award-winning Tolkien biographer and I've been researching and writing about #Tolkien for years. Now I also crowdfund. My thanks go out to the supporters who helped me achieve all I have over the past year. Take a look here to see what I did! tinyurl.com/mytolkien2025

Did you know a wartime bomber crashed explosively into a house near Tolkien's and sent him racing to help out with rescue efforts? Read about it at my blog. tinyurl.com/bombcrash #tolkien #ww2 #oxford #raf

The wanderer's return … I have a new biographical article in the latest Tolkien Studies, with @petermgilliver.bsky.social of the OED, filling in an important gap in Tolkien's life at the end of #WW1. Read about my discovery at my blog: tinyurl.com/tolkien-1918... #Tolkien #Oxford #OED

#JFK, #CSLewis, #AldousHuxley all died on 22 November 1963. Starkly different men, each gave his energies to universal concerns. Together they form a curious triptych on the mortal condition. Read on at my blog… tinyurl.com/lewishuxleyjfk

After living through the Nazi & atomic bomb eras, Tove Jansson writings would often encompass fearful ideas about loss of a familiar world. However she would balance this with characters who encompassed #kindness & #community, even in the darkest times #WomensArt #WorldKindnessDay

The Great War. Tanks at the Gates of Gondolin Great article by @johngarthwriter.bsky.social & brilliant illustration by #RogerGarland johngarth.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/t... If you've not read Tolkien & The Great War then you should @timbolton.bsky.social #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien

On a fine summer day in a former age, Robert Quilter Gilson of the #TCBS made a watercolour of a Norfolk beach scene. I find it one of the most affecting of the pictures preserved in the little sketchbooks of this friend of #Tolkien. More: tinyurl.com/robgilson1914 #Remembrance

Whenever I look in detail at the day-to-day events of the Second World War, so full of sorrow and horror, I'm always struck by the births of people who will go on to make the world a better place. #remembrancesunday #remembranceday #remembrance

"Problems for [Tolkien's] listeners would be compounded by his tendency to pursue lines of thought like a fox dashing from covert to covert, as he does in all versions of ‘On Fairy-stories’." - @johngarthwriter.bsky.social in the latest Journal of Inklings Studies. 15.2 (2025) open access.

So I sat down to read C.S. Lewis’s All My Road Before Me, his 1922–1927 diary. It promises a deep dive into the period when he met Tolkien. But five pages in, I had to put the book down. I had been attacked by a Screwtapian demon of distraction… tinyurl.com/allmyroad #cslewis

I've identified the manuscript #Tolkien used for his landmark 1939 lecture On Fairy-stories – previously thought lost. See my featured article, available online, in the latest issue of the Journal of Inklings Studies! www.euppublishing.com/journal/ink

To mark the publication of Tolkien's Bovadium Fragments, join me as I explore the background to his satire on the motor-car and Oxford… #tolkien #oxford #bovadium tinyurl.com/tolkienmotors

Tolkien and the Great War by @johngarthwriter.bsky.social t.co/RwYqQykkry

The Worlds of JRR Tolkien by @johngarthwriter.bsky.social amzn.to/4nDXBd0 The Letters of JRR Tolkien amzn.to/3ISIRYy Pity Power & Tolkien's Ring by @alas-not-me.bsky.social amzn.to/3VQex3Q The Fantasy of JRR Tolkien amzn.to/435Vnuz Tolkien & the Great War by by John Garth amzn.to/42qOLqr

As #Tolkien became professor of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford century ago, the city’s Morris Motors became Britain’s biggest car maker. There's a certain inevitability he would flourish a poison pen on the topic. I review THE BOVADIUM FRAGMENTS in today's Times. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

During the month of October @princetonupress.bsky.social has @johngarthwriter.bsky.social's excellent book "The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien" available for 70% off! If you don't have it already, this is a great opportunity.

Did you know J.R.R. Tolkien was an air raid warden in the Second World War while writing The Lord of the Rings? Now a previously unseen archive image reveals the date he joined. I have thoughts on why… tinyurl.com/tolkienwarden #Tolkien #WW2 #Oxford #LotR

Happy Hobbit Day everyone! On this day in 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien gave us The Hobbit, our doorway into Middle-earth. Inside he hid a gift to his favourite aunt. My latest blog post will put you in the picture! tinyurl.com/hobbitongrange #Tolkien #HobbitDay #Hobbit

Tolkien hid all kinds of personal jokes and messages in his stories and – it turns out – in his pictures. Here's a newly discovered one in his famous image of Hobbiton. tinyurl.com/hobbitongrange #Tolkien #Hobbit #Hobbiton #inspiration #Nottinghamshire

At his talk in Cork, @johngarthwriter.bsky.social talked about the influence of the Tuatha de Danann on the elves. This whole sequence reminds me a bit of another part of Irish mythology, the Colloquy of the Ancients.

What do you think the #Beatles might have sung if they'd made their #LotR movie? I'll start… Carry That Weight Shelob’s You Elanor Gamgee I Am The Man Who Wrote The Oxford English Dictionary Etymology For The Word “Walrus” [Gary B and Gary D 🥲 also contributed. No AI was used in this image.]

What do you think the #Beatles might have sung if they'd made their #LotR movie? I'll start… Carry That Weight Shelob’s You Elanor Gamgee I Am The Man Who Wrote The Oxford English Dictionary Etymology For The Word “Walrus” [No AI was used in this image. Gary B and Gary D 😢 contributed.]

My new article with @petermgilliver.bsky.social, in the newly announced Tolkien Studies 21, sheds light on a hazy but crucial period of Tolkien's life – at the end of his WW1 soldiering and the start of his OED work. kalimac.blogspot.com/2025/08/tolk... #tolkien #oed #ww1 #tolkienstudies

The unexpected joys of teaching a Tolkien course in Tolkien's old Oxford college, Merton… My room is in a 16th-century building and the view from the windows might be of some nook of Minas Tirith. Outside in the street someone is talking about Tolkien. It's deep immersion!

Long before hobbits, #Elves were at the heart of #Tolkien's mythology. From Lúthien to Legolas, they continue to enchant us. This Tuesday, online or at Brixton's Blues Kitchen, I explore their inspirations, lore and lessons for us all. Plus tips on Elvish! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tolkiens-e...

The latest conversation was with leading Tolkien scholar @johngarthwriter.bsky.social - we talked about Tolkien's life, the process of research and the impact of Middle-earth! This was a treat. youtu.be/SPJu_VyeIw4

What can we expect from Tolkien's BOVADIUM FRAGMENTS? tinyurl.com/bovadian #Tolkien #Bovadium

Here's the cover of Tolkien's satire on Oxford and the motor car, THE BOVADIUM FRAGMENTS, out on 9 October. The painting is Tolkien's … but actually it doesn't show Oxford at all. So here's my quiz question for you. Where and when did he paint it? #tolkien #bovadium #oxford

The BIG painting is finished! It was visiting Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland that inspired JRR Tolkien to create the concept of middle-earth. I know this because my drawing of the same view was used to illustrate a book about Tolkien by John Garth. #Tolkien

Not just the quote from Tolkien either. Great article from John Garth!

some bts from the latest interview can't believe I get to do stuff like this

I’m bringing my epic history of #Tolkien's #LotR to Liverpool next week! Book now for a fantastic evening on Wednesday 21 May at Boxpark Liverpool. With Q&A and book signing. Tickets going fast, so get yours at tinyurl.com/lpool-tolkien @boxpark.bsky.social

“Why was Tolkien writing about fairies in a war zone?" That question helped launch @johngarthwriter.bsky.social into researching Tolkien’s life during the War, and shed new light on the origins of Middle-earth! Our full conversation is live now!

Indeed, a great time was had by all. Thanks for the chat, ‪@tolkienwonder.bsky.social. It was great to share some memories, ambitions, ideas, and (above all) love for #Tolkien's works. Enjoy the video, everyone!

I’m bringing my epic history of #Tolkien's #LotR to Liverpool next week! Book now for a fantastic evening on Wednesday 21 May at Boxpark Liverpool. With Q&A and book signing. Tickets going fast, so get yours at tinyurl.com/lpool-tolkien @boxpark.bsky.social