“He became a Fellow of St Edmund Hall in 1955, recommended by JRR Tolkien, who wrote that Mitchell ‘would prove a very suitable person to fill the lectureship . . . although he is an Australian’.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article7041454.ece
- wellinghall

Mint Brook Meadow Teas has obtained a license from Tolkien Enterprises to use the Hobbit brand and characters from that book in order to market their tea. Hobbit Tea is made in their facility (it is impossible to call it a factory) in Dalton - a small village near Wooster, Ohio. Dante and […]

On the left menu bar of TCG pages you now have a small widget that will translate the current page you are on into one of a wide variety of languages supported by Google Translate. The service is far from perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but for those of you for whom […]

Amazon.co.uk have the book available as a pre-order for release on the 1st April 2010.

The New York Times just posted an article about the phrase “Cellar Door” (that is, in fact, the title of their piece). The print edition of this piece is supposed to appear in print on February 14, 2010, on page 16 of the Sunday Magazine.
The article refers to the movie “Donnie Darko”, in which […]

UPDATE
The new dates are
Public 9-5: Sat 14th Aug – Mon 16th Aug 2010, free entry.Invite only Preview Party: Fri 13th Aug 2010.
Please note that this is the same weekend as the “Festival in the Shire” event. The next Cotswalds gathering in Moreton-in-Marsh has been postponed temporarily. The delay will allow the new Hilary Tolkien book […]

The Cimmerian has just posted a very useful and lengthy review by Brian Murphy of the 1998 heavy metal album Nightfall of Middle-earth by Blind Guardian.
A brief summary quote from the review:
Now, I know heavy metal ain’t everyone’s cup o’ tea. But if you like Tolkien you might want to give Nightfall in Middle-earth a […]

Jason Fisher writes on his Blog that “The Book of Jonah” originally scheduled to be released last August has been canceled.
More information here

From the BBC description of the episode, “Host John Humphrys invites four contenders to answer questions in the black chair. The specialist subjects are TV westerns of the 50s and 60s, the life and work of Tolkien, the government of Gough Whitlam 1972 -1975, and the life and career of Dixie Dean.”
The specialist in this […]

Jason Fisher kindly gave me permission to reprint his blog post on the upcoming Congress. Enjoy! (And read his blog regularly!)
The schedule for the Forty-fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies, also known simply as Kalamazoo, has been published. The conference runs May 13-16, 2010 at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. One of the […]