Wizards, Hobbits and WWII: Dominic Sandbrook on The Lord of the Rings

Secret Life of Books

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One ring to rule them all

One ring to…

Yes, SLoB finally turns its Sauron-like eye on what is thought to be the second best-selling novel of all time (after Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities): Lord of the Rings. And who better to share this experience than Dominic Sandbrook, historian of the 20th Century, co-host of the Rest is History podcast, and Tolkien devotee.

In this Fellowship of Literary Analysis, Dominic, Sophie and Jonty are united in believing that Lord of the Rings - a novel which, superficially, appears to be about orcs and wizards in a fantasy realm - is in fact one of the greatest novels about the 20th Century. Together, they plunder Tolkien’s work and life to show how seismic events - two world wars, the rise of fascism, industrialisation, environmental disaster - found expression in his sprawling masterpiece.

Jonty and Dominic clash, like marauding armies on the plains of Mordor, over whether the many poems and songs in Lord of the Rings are of a quality that the reader deserves. While Sophie embarks on the inevitable digression into the Dead Marshes of the Protestant Reformation.

Dominic gives the shock announcement that Tolkien almost called Frodo ‘Bingo’, which would have made for a great episode of Bluey but not for a terrifying novel about good versus evil. Even less so if Tolkien had also followed his original intention to call Aragorn ‘Trotter’ and the Elves ‘Gnomes’. After all, it’s hard to imagine Cate Blanchett signing up for the role of Galadriel, the ethereal gnome

Further reading:

The Great British Dream Factory: The Strange History of Our National Imagination by Dominic Sandbrook (London: Allen Lane. 2015)

JRR Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (Harper Collins, 1998)

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