Last month we were in southern England, and we spent a week in Oxford. One of the primary reasons was to visit the JRR Tolkien exhibit at Oxford’s famous Bodleian Library.
The exhibit is impressive and still open. It is free of charge, but you do have to book your tickets. To learn more, see their site. As you would expect, it features many JRR Tolkien books and details of his life. Beyond that, I was surprised by how much art he generated.
Below are a number of pictures from our Tolkien-oriented travels around Oxford. Besides the exhibit, we visited the pub that he and CS Lewis frequented, his grave, and his home.
Below is the entrance to the Bodleian library’s JRR Tolkien exhibit. This is actually a photo from their site. They have a nice coffee shop and store beside the exhibit. The house we were renting is about 2 miles in the background. To get to this area we would walk along a path through a field and across several campuses. In addition to the students, we were passed by professors on their rusting bikes, their long coats flowing, and their grey hair in a tangle. It all felt very much like a great place to write about Middle Earth or Hogwarts.
The famous Blackwell bookstore was next door, but that is another story.
Below is the exhibit from the outside.
Of course, we could not take pictures in the exhibit, but after a couple fascinating hours, we walked about half a mile to the “Eagle and Child” pub which CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien frequented every Tuesday. It is a small place, and we happened to be at the front door when they opened for the day. This is a photo I grabbed off the internet because I had not thought to get a photo of the outside.
Below is a sign on the wall commemorating their famous patrons. My picture is not so good, so I transcribed what it says:
“C. S. Lewis, his brother W. H. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and other friends met every Tuesday morning, between the years 1939 – 1962 in the back room of this their favorite pub. These men, popularly known as the ‘inklings,’ met here to drink Beer and to discuss, among other things the books they were writing.”
Below is a poster commemorating The Hobbit.
This poster and warning was a throw to CS Lewis’ Narnia.
Of course, we actually ate there, too. I had an excellent Sheppard’s Pie.
Early the next day, we stopped by Tolkien’s grave.
Even after all these years, every day people leave gifts and notes for Tolkien. Below you can see one. “The road goes ever on and on…” It was humbling but also impressive that he still inspires such a following.
We also drove by his home.
All an all it was a fascinating experience delving deeper into Tolkien and his worlds, both imagined and real.
Later in the trip, we visited several of the locations at which Harry Potter was filmed, as well as the studio in London where most of the creative work was done and many of the sets remain.
While in London, we saw one of Shakespeare’s plays at the original Globe Theater. My wife managed to get us seats in the second balcony perfectly centered before the stage, and it was a gorgeous night.
More on both of those excursions in a future post.
Our time delving into Tolkien’s worlds inspired me to write a new chapter for my own work in progress while we were there. Our travels gave me a new idea on how to cover a bit of back story and further one character’s development which I had not yet done adequately. So after everyone else went to bed each night, I would sit in some corner of whatever rental house we were in banging out more of IrSaa’s background and experiences at the military academy. After a bit of tweaking upon our return, I submitted it to my online writing seminar, where it got generally favorable reviews, baring one plot aspect I need to figure out.
So it goes as a writer. Seesawing back and forth between inspiration and long pauses. Our visit to the worlds of Tolkien, Rowling, and Shakespeare certainly inspired me.
