Recent Developments

• As the next phase of my Outreach work, on 26th March I was able to begin conducting the delayed course on 14th Century English Verse Romances. Following an introductory meeting, we looked at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and will encounter Sir Orfeo at the next meeting, followed by Bevis of Hampton.
• For the Poetry Reading Group in March, I gave a short presentation on Iambic Pentameter, followed by a similarly short presentation in April on Grey's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
• My most recent contribution to Tolkien Studies has been a Study Pack detailing how to 'walking-through' selected chapters of The Hobbit. For anyone unfamiliar with a walk-through, it makes reading a text more fun and more dynamic as participants are reading the words of characters AND moving around and miming actions. This process does not require any acting skill, only the ability to read! It is more fun for students of all ages, especially those who dislike reading. The Pack is posted on the TS Education webpages.
• With the invaluable help and support of other members of the Southampton (UK) Tolkien Reading Group (the Southfarthing smial), I created a display in our local library for Tolkien Reading Day. The theme of TRD this year was Journeys and Destinations. Our display took this theme in a literary form and showed how Tolkien's work can be regarded as a journey through some of the finest works of English literature, including Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and even Robert Browning!
• My most recent contributions to the Tolkien Society's publications have been (1) a review of Christine Davidson's The Darkling and the Lady, for Mallorn 47, and a review of Dimitra Fimi's Tolkien, Race and Culural History, in Amon Hen 216. Also in Mallorn 47, my short story An Afternoon at the Seaside.