The Journal Editorial

From the Editor

Alex Lewis.

There is just over a month to go before the Festival in the Shire takes place and preparations are ongoing for an event that will I am certain be both memorable and enjoyable for all those who can attend. Much hard work is going into ensuring that as many different interests are catered for, from the serious academic to the fan who just wants to immerse themselves in Tolkien’s fantastic creativity. There will be a warm welcome for one and all.

Once more the immediate response of an online journal is shown for its value as just as your editor was about to release this issue, he learnt that we shall indeed be welcoming Rick Wakeman to play at the Festival in the Shire! For more details, see the specific announcement.

This month we have a special interview with Doctor Dimitra Fimi on the online course that she is organising; such courses are an extremely exciting development for it means that a student can enrol and take a course wherever they might be in the world. The only requirement would be a connection to the internet. Is this a look into the future of Tolkien teaching? Read what Dimitra had to tell the journal and find out more!

There is an interview with the well-known artist Paul Gregory, whose work has long been admired. The works are large scale and truly epic, and it was a real pleasure to have this opportunity to find out more about his art. Paul Gregory will have his works on display at the Festival and there will also be something special available to those attending the Festival. More on this, I hope, in the next issue of the journal! There is also an interview with the Italian composer and pianist Marco Lo Muscio. He will be at the Festival and what he tells us in the journal is quite fascinating.

The paper by Jodi Storer on Tom Bombadil continues in this issue of the journal, and the final part shall appear in the next issue. Please remember the age of this contributor - it is quite astonishing to find someone as young as this writing so well. Eglerio!

I am including a poem from a new contributor from America, Alyssa House-Thomas, and I found it quite fascinating - I hope that readers also appreciate the skill and love that has obviously gone into this piece. She writes: ' My immediate inspiration was John Garth’s excellent book Tolkien and the Great War… The night of May 30, reflecting that Memorial Day would be observed the following day, I began thinking once again about the ruin of the T. C. B. S. as described by Garth, specifically about G. B. Smith and how terribly appropriate was the title of his posthumously-published volume of poetry, as applied both to himself and to all others taken by war before the full development of their talents…. when I read Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front as a teenager in high school, already thoroughly Tolkien-mad by that point, my first and recurring thought was, “That could have been J. R. R.” One stray bullet, and this immense sub-creation that so many people the world over have found meaningful and beautiful would never have come into being. How many other Niggles had had their tree cut off at the shoot in the War to End All Wars?’ I shall let the readers go and read the poem for themselves – and enjoy all the Tolkienian references embodied in it.

.	"the Festival in the Shire might reasonably be claimed to be the first event that is on a scale anything like as ambitious as that Centenary Conference. "

Let me tell you a short story about an event from the ‘mythic past’. Back in 1992 at Keble College Oxford, the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society together held the Tolkien Centenary Conference. It was one week long and included many varied and interesting events, displays, performances, and speakers. Indeed, the Festival in the Shire might reasonably be claimed to be the first event that is on a scale anything like as ambitious as that Centenary Conference. I was at the time the outgoing Chairman of the Tolkien Society and was in a wonderful position to be able to relax and not worry about how well the Conference itself ran. So, with a chance to take it easy, I was able to fully immerse myself in all the various events that were held that week. If you were to ask me what impressed me the most during the whole Centenary Conference, you might be surprised to hear my answer - it was the truly amazing art and craft and creativity of Philip Smith MBE. For those of you who have never heard of him, Philip is a world-renowned designer bookbinder who works in many different materials to create wonderful art bindings for books, and some of his most famous bindings, which were on show at Keble College in 1992, were for the Lord of the Rings. Philip is now 82 years of age, and a real gentleman and an absolute delight to talk to. We have had interviews with authors, scholars, artists, sculptors, composers - and next month, I shall be bringing you an interview with Philip Smith MBE, and inviting you to enter his world of designer bookbindings. This is, therefore, a bit of a teaser, and I hope you will forgive your editor for being quite as excited as he is to announce this piece for next month, as it is a quite unique creative venture which I am sure will delight and astonish others as much as it did me all those years ago.

Alex Lewis