'Like, yet unlike,' is Merry's comment in The Lord of the Rings when he first sees Gandalf and Saruman together: Gandalf, returned from the dead, has assumed the white robes formerly worn by Saruman, who has succumbed to despair and been corrupted by evil and is about to be deposed. So we have two people … Continue reading ‘Like, yet unlike.’
Tag: JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit as adult literature
No, not that kind of ‘adult’ - please! I have been trying to pin down the source of my conviction that The Hobbit is, essentially, a book more for adults than children - a conviction that I formed on re-reading it after many years. I think it is because it is about a grand scheme … Continue reading The Hobbit as adult literature
The Cartography of Childhood 2: a recanting
'Blog in haste, repent at leisure.' (old proverb, probably attributed to Albert Einstein/Dr Seuss/Abraham Lincoln) When I said ‘the fantasy element in fantasy literature is the embodiment of the child’s expectations of the grown-up world’ I felt I had pinned down an idea that I have been moving towards for some time - years, in … Continue reading The Cartography of Childhood 2: a recanting
The Cartography of Childhood
The first house I remember clearly is the second I lived in, from when I was not yet three till shortly before my seventh birthday. It occupied the upper right-hand quarter of a council house that stood at one end of a pair of keyhole-shaped cul-de-sacs that faced one another across a main street. To … Continue reading The Cartography of Childhood
COMPLEAT TROWZER 