Guests
Michael Tolkien
Author and poet. Born in 1943 to John and Michael Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien’s eldest son) he grew up in the Chilterns, Birmingham, North Yorkshire and Lancashire. He studied English Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews, and Restoration and 18th Century English Literature at Merton College, Oxford. Following a career as a teacher he has published four volumes of poetry. Later this year he will be publishing two books based Florence Bone’s children’s fantasy novels, Wish and Rainbow. At The Return of the Ring he will be talking his works, how they relate to his grandfather's On Fairy-Stories and will then be taking questions from the audience.
Michael Tolkien’s website
Michael Tolkien at Tolkien Gateway
Charlie Ross - One Man LOTR
Comedic performer and star of ‘One Man LOTR’. Following the success of his production ‘One Man Star Wars Trilogy’, Charlie Ross turned to The Lord of the Rings for his next show, a work which he fell in love with as a child. Charlie, a Canadian actor, has toured worldwide with ‘One Man Lord of the Rings’ and will be taking a break from his run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to come down to Loughborough to give an exclusive performance to full attendees of The Return of the Ring.
Tom Shippey
Tolkien polemic, notable scholar and professor of philology. Author of acclaimed book The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and the editor of Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien; he has also appeared in numerous documentaries, including on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy DVDs. Has been the guest speaker at several Tolkien Society Annual Dinners, the most recent being 1991 where his talk was the inspiration for the Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees series of Peter Roe booklets published by the Tolkien Society.
Tom Shippey’s profile at Saint Louis University
Tom Shippey at Tolkien Gateway
Ted Nasmith
Renowned Tolkien artist. Has illustrated the most-recent edition of The Silmarillion and Robert Foster’s The Complete Guide to Middle-earth as well as an impressive number of Tolkien Calendars including the 1992 Tolkien Centenary one. Was the guest speaker at the 2003 Tolkien Society Annual Dinner and a guest at Tolkien 2005.
Ted Nasmith’s website
Ted Nasmith at Tolkien Gateway
The Fellowship of the Green Dragon
Re-enactment society. The Fellowship of the Green Dragon (la Compagnie du Dragon Vert) is a French re-enactment society founded in 2006 whose primary aim is to bring the works of J.R.R. Tolkien to life. The perform open-air theatre, sword-fighting, amongst other things, and are frequent attendees at fantasy and historical re-enactment festivals. For The Return of the Ring they are going to be spending the whole weekend with us in their own encampment with their own full schedule.
Green Dragon’s website
Green Dragon’s Gallery
Read more about the Company of the Green Dragon on our events page
Kate Madison
Actor and filmmaker. In 2003 Kate founded Actors at Work Productions which ultimately led her to direct, and act in, the critically-acclaimed and widely-publicised fan-film Born of Hope. Born of Hope is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings and tells the story of Aragorn’s parents and grandparents, Arathorn, Gilraen, Arador, Dírhael and Ivorwen. The film was released online in 2009 and was mostly filmed at the West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village in Suffolk.
Kate Madison’s website
Kate Madison on Twitter
Kate Madison at Tolkien Gateway
Brian Sibley
Broadcaster and author. In conjunction with Michael Bakewell adapted The Lord of the Rings for BBC Radio 4’s acclaimed dramatisation. Author of The Lord of the Rings: Official Movie Guide, The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy and The Maps of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (with illustrations by John Howe). Most recently, he wrote the biography of Peter Jackson Peter Jackson: A Film-maker’s Journey. Was the guest speaker at the 2002 Tolkien Society Annual Dinner and a guest at Tolkien 2005.
Brian Sibley’s website
Brian Sibley on Twitter
Brian Sibley at Tolkien Gateway
Verlyn Flieger
Specialist in myth studies and comparative mythology; a professor at Maryland University, teacher, author and public speaker. Author of a range of books on myth and Tolkien, including Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faerie and Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth (co-edited with Carl Hostetter). Recently, she has edited Smith of Wootton Major, Tolkien On Fairy-stories (with Douglas A. Anderson) and is a co-editor of the Tolkien Studies journal. She was a guest at Tolkien 2005.
Verlyn Flieger’s website
Verlyn Flieger at Tolkien Gateway
Corey Olsen
Podcasting professor. A professor at Washington College who teaches courses on Tolkien, Chaucer, Thomas Malory and mediaeval literature he founded The Tolkien Professor website and podcast in the summer of 2009. His lectures come packed with information and are well-regarded by scholars and more casual fans alike. He is President of the Mythgard Institute which provides courses in Tolkien and the Inklings.
The Tolkien Professor
The Tolkien Professor on Twitter
Corey Olsen at Tolkien Gateway
John Garth
John Garth is the author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, winner of the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship; he also voiced the HarperCollins audiobook. He has spoken internationally on Tolkien’s war at conferences including Tolkien 2005, at the National Army Museum, and on television, radio, and DVD (including Peter Jackson’s Return of the King). His reviews of books including The Children of Húrin and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún have appeared in the TLS, The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, The Evening Standard and elsewhere. He is a contributor to the Routledge J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia and to the upcoming Wiley-Blackwell Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien. A freelance writer, editor and researcher, he lives with wife Jessica and daughter Lorelei.
John Garth’s website
John Garth at Tolkien Gateway
Colin Duriez
Expert on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. His publications include The Inklings Handbook (with David Porter), Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Story of their Friendship, and A Field Guide to Narnia. Colin has appeared as a commentator on Tolkien on the Extended DVDs of The Two Towers and The Return of the King and as a commentator on C.S. Lewis on the recent PBS nationwide broadcast On the Question of God (on Lewis and Sigmund Freud) in the USA. He was also interviewed by Joan Bakewell on GMTV about his dual biography of Lewis and Tolkien.
Colin Duriez’s website
Colin Duriez on Twitter
Colin Duriez at Tolkien Gateway
Nancy Martsch
Fan Guest of Honour and editor of Beyond Bree, the journal of American Mensa’s Tolkien Special Interest Group. In 1980, she became the Co-ordinator of Mensa’s Tolkien S.I.G. The first issue of ‘The Tolkien S.I.G. News’ (later ‘Beyond Bree’) was published in March 1981. In the years that followed, Beyond Bree; has grown from its original 6 readers to more than a hundred in the United States and abroad. Nancy has presented papers at Tolkien conferences (including Mythcon, the Tolkien Centenary Conference, and Tolkien 2005), and is the author of Basic Quenya, a primer for Elvish.
Beyond Bree
Nancy Martsch at Tolkien Gateway
Chris Bouchard
Film director. In 2009, after two years of work, Chris released the popular online film-prequel The Hunt for Gollum which has been seen by over 15 million people around the world. The film is set immediately before the events of The Lord of the Rings films and follows Aragorn’s quest to find Gollum somewhere in Mirkwood. When released, it was the fourth-most-watched film in the whole USA, beating many Hollywood blockbuster hits.
Chris Bouchard’s website
Chris Bouchard at Tolkien Gateway
Martin Barker
Academic and researcher. Martin Barker has spent his working life in the academic fields of media and cultural studies, publishing 13 books to date, but he has especially worked in the field of film audiences, and in 2003-4 he led a world project to study the reception of the films of The Lord of the Rings. With just under 25,000 responses to a complex survey, it produced a huge body of knowledge about what ‘fantasy’ means to people in different country and cultural contexts. His analysis was published in Watching The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s World Audiences.
Martin Barker’s profile at Aberystwyth University
Janet Brennan Croft
Author and editor. Janet Brennan Croft is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma libraries and is the author of War in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and editor of the essay collections Tolkien on Film and Tolkien and Shakespeare, as well as the journal Mythlore. She is currently editing a book on Lois McMaster Bujold.
Janet Brennan Croft’s profile at University of Oklahoma
Janet Brennan Croft at Tolkien Gateway
Bob Blackham
Author and local expert. Bob has written several books in recent years, namely The Roots of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Tolkien’s Oxford, The Pitkin Guide to Tolkien and, most recently, Tolkien and the Peril of War. He is well-known to Tolkien Society members and attendees of Tolkien 2005 as he provides excellent tours of the various Tolkien sites around Birmingham and Oxford.
Bob Blackham at Tolkien Gateway
Dimitra Fimi
Author and lecturer on fantasy literature. Dimitra published Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits in 2008, which subsequently won the 2010 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies, and has contributed to Tolkien Studies, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Folklore, Silver Leaves, Mallorn and the book Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy.
Dimitra Fimi’s website
Dimitra Fimi at Tolkien Gateway
Jason Fisher
Blogger and author. Jason is a scholar specialising in J.R.R. Tolkien and Mediaeval Germanic philology and is the editor of Tolkien and the Study of His Sources, blogger behind Lingwë - Musings of a Fish and the recently-appointed editor of the Mythopoeic Society’s bulletin Mythprint He has contributed to numenour publications including J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Tolkien and Modernity, The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, Tolkien Studies, Mythlore, Middle-earth and Beyond and Middle-earth Minstrel.
Lingwë - Musings of a Fish
Jason Fisher at Tolkien Gateway
Henry Gee
Biologist and editor. In 2004 he published The Science of Middle-earth which takes a scientific approach to trying to understand some of the mysteries of Middle-earth (such as how mithril can be so strong). Since 2008 he has been the editor of the Tolkien Society’s biannual journal Mallorn, overseeing an extensive redesign of the publication. When not editing Mallorn, he is busy utilising his PhD in biology editing Nature magazine and winning the European Science Fiction Society’s Best Publisher Award.
Henry Gee’s website
Henry Gee on Twitter
Henry Gee at Tolkien Gateway
