I have enjoyed this week’s Radio 3 ‘Composer of the Week’ series, in which Donald Macleod has taken us through the career of Ned Rorem. In addition to a rich and varied musical corpus, Rorem also kept a long series of private diaries, later published, which were once famous for…

What happens to Sauron’s ring? Of course it is destroyed: dissolved in the magma of Mount Doom, the only material hot enough, or magically-primed enough — since this is where the ring was originally forged — to break it. OK: but what about afterwards? Here’s what I said about the…

I went to Aberdeen University in 1983, spent four years doing an English-Classics Joint-Honours degree and after that went straight to Cambridge to do my PhD. In my first year as an undergraduate I was shuffled randomly into student-accommodation with three guys, all medical students. We got on well, and…

The Hobbit (1937) did not appear in a German-language edition until 1957: Der Kleiner Hobbit und der große Zauberer (translated by Walter Scherf; published Recklinghausen: Paulus-Verlag). Why the delay? There is a very famous story, often repeated, that the German publisher Rütten & Loening approached Tolkien to publish a (likely…

… is the name of my new band. In 1926 Dorothy Collins became G K Chesterton’s secretary. Her employer had another ten years of life in him, during which time he relied, increasingly, on her assistance. Here’s J.I.M. Stewart: Perhaps she is best glimpsed during Chesterton’s second lecture tour in…

Great heftin, lumbrin, yawn-gob beastie, O, what a weight is in thy tummy At loll in lakes or on land marshy, Soakin and sunnin: Yet I for one could not outpace thee When ye start runnin! An when you’re in your ain dominion Beneath the waves an submare swimmin It’s nae a matter o opinion, To mark your speed o’, Gainst any fish or seal you’re winnin, A sliek torpedo! Great Hippo, like unto a freight train, Thou Boltst aye faster than doth Usain: Impeded not a jot by weight-gain With joyous speed The best laid diets o’ massy men Should pay thee heed!

It’s what was, by 1971 when the first of M John Harrison’s Viriconium novels was published, a well-established tradition: Vance’s Dying Earth, a far future in which remnants of (to us 20th or 21st-century folk) advanced technology, distressed and rusted but still functional, coexist with a decadent, Early Modern or…

A striking department store window-display in La Crosse, Winsconsin, 1918. Robert N. Gross has the story. As the U.S. government prosecuted its aims “Over There” in Europe, it busied itself with fighting a different sort of war “Over Here,” on the home front. In cities and on farms, in schools…

Once upon a night Antarctic, whilst I pondered the cathartic Power of many quaint and tragic volumes of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a clapping, As of flippers briskly slapping, slapping on my igloo floor. …