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As a person who has written on Tolkien for almost fifteen years and read Tolkien for thirty-six years, I am often asked about his political views. In a sense, this is a funny question, as Tolkien really despised most politics. In fact, he really thought of himself as very anti-political. His few statements on the matter reveal just how unpolitical and apolitical and anti-political he could be. It is also, however, a natural question for someone to ask about the great man, as we live in a highly politicized age. So, what do we know? First, Tolkien was a conservative...

J.R.R. Tolkien, the British author best known for The Hobbit and his epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was an astute critic of socialism and utopianism and a passionate defender of liberty, says Jay Richards, co-author of The Hobbit Party, which he calls “a study of the political and economic implications of Tolkien’s thought.” “Certainly anyone that’s seen The Lord of the Rings, for instance, at the movies knows that he was deeply concerned about the dangers and the temptations of absolute power. "The symbol of the one ring, of course. It’s not just a symbol of the sort...

Peter Jackson has said he won't be making anymore movies based on J. R. R. Tolkien's work, because the estate won't let him. SNIP The writer's son Christopher, who was appointed by his father as his literary executor, said that he was disappointed by the way the movies had diluted the artistry of the novels. He told Le Monde in 2012: 'Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time. 'The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work and what it has become has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has...

JRR Tolkien in 1967 (Photo: PA) Books blog: Dr Holly Ordway's Not God's Type recounts a fascinating and uplifting journeyI have been reading Dr Holly OrdwayÂ’s Not GodÂ’s Type: an Atheist Academic Lays Down her Arms (Ignatius Press, or Gracewing in the UK). It is always uplifting to read books like this, not in a triumphalist way but because it is a reminder that underneath all the glaring human weaknesses in the Church as an institution, which we all know so well, there are still people out there who are searching for answers to fundamental questions and then finding...

This past summer my junior honors theology students read The Hobbit in preparation for their morality class this fall. While reading, I discovered why so many enjoy The Hobbit. We can connect so well with Bilbo Baggins and the other characters because they are so real, so like us. One can also find many “hidden” parallels or analogies to the Catholic Faith if they are truly sought out. What draws so many readers to The Hobbit is this central Christian message: there is a Bilbo Baggins inside of us who is faced with a decision whether or not to...

Sixty years ago today, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” part one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork, “The Lord of the Rings,” was published in the United Kingdom. Tolkien conceived of the novel as one book, not three. He would have preferred for its approximately 1,200 to 1,500 pages (depending on the edition) to appear between just one set of covers. But his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, decided to mete out the fantasy narrative and release it as a trilogy over 15 months. “The Two Towers” came out in November, 1954, and “The Return of the King” hit bookstore shelves the...

'The Hobbit' Part 3 News: Climax Of 'Battle of Five Armies' 'Sets Tone' For 'What's Going To Happen' In 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy Letteri went on to speak about how the ending of this movie would lead into and help fans better understand the Lord of the Rings trilogy. "Yeah because it is the climax, and you really just need to know that there is another battle for Middle-earth," he said." The whole extension of The Hobbit's story has really been to get us to the point where we understand when we leave it what's going to happen when...

A Glendale, Ore., man decked out for battle and allegedly high on LSD thought he was fighting the evil ‘Morgoth,’ but really, he was stabbing a woman’s car in a Portland, Ore., intersection.

There’s more to J. R. R. Tolkien than wizards and hobbits. The author of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” was also an Oxford University professor specializing in languages like Old Norse and Old English. “Beowulf” was an early love, and a kind of Rosetta Stone to his creative work. His study of the poem, which he called “this greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art,” informed his thinking about myth and language.

So much for that fellowship of the ring. Viggo Mortensen took a shot at Peter Jackson's dependence on visual effects in the "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy films, which are widely considered to have launched the actor's career to a higher level. In a frank interview with London's The Telegraph, the 55-year-old star of the upcoming "Two Faces of January" gave a thumbs-down to every J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation his former director has made since the first installment, 2001's "The Fellowship of the Ring."

It is being rumored that the evil Sauron will return and battle the White Council in The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

In a recent interview, Richard Armitage revealed that he was quite emotional about the completion of the trilogy. The 42-year-old actor spoke with BANG Showbiz about finally wrapping the trilogy and how now that the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogy was completed, he was very moved. "It will be 15 years of Peter Jackson's work, there'll be six movies to watch, but it could be the final time. There's something moving about that," he said.

Now this is precious. $6.2 billion and counting. That's how much films based on J. R. R. Tolkien's books have made in all at the box office so far. And there's still one part of The Hobbit trilogy to come. The Lord Of The Rings (LOTR) and The Hobbit are also on the list of Top 10 best selling books of all time - LOTR at No. 2 with 150 million copies sold. The Hobbit is No. 6 with 100 million copies sold.

Hit the jump to check out The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug character designs

The harrowing battle scenes and heartache in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece The Lord Of The Rings were inspired by the author’s own First World War nightmare and the death of close friends from Birmingham.

Peter Jackson has made some remarkable movies. There’s no denying that his sprawling Lord of the Rings trilogy was the very definition of epic—filled with massive battles, touching moments, and beautiful cinematography, not to mention a lovely score.

2014 birthday toast On the 3rd January 1892 JRR Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. To celebrate this event, on this day each year Tolkien fans around the world were invited to raise a glass and toast the birthday of this much loved author 21:00 (9 pm) your local time. The toast is "The Professor". For those unfamiliar with British toast-drinking ceremonies: To make the Birthday Toast, you stand, raise a glass of your choice of drink (not necessarily alcoholic), and say the words 'The Professor' before taking a sip (or swig, if that's more appropriate for your drink)....

Since rumors began to spread that a startup called Palantir helped to kill Osama bin Laden, Alex Karp hasn’t had much time to himself. On one sun-baked July morning in Silicon Valley Palantir’s lean 45-year-old chief executive, with a top-heavy mop of frazzled hair, hikes the grassy hills around Stanford University’s massive satellite antennae known as the Dish, a favorite meditative pastime. But his solitude is disturbed somewhat by “Mike,” an ex-Marine–silent, 6 foot 1, 270 pounds of mostly pectoral muscle–who trails him everywhere he goes. Even on the suburban streets of Palo Alto, steps from Palantir’s headquarters, the bodyguard...

Pretty much everyone knows that JRR Tolkien was the pre-eminent fantasy writer of the past century, if not all time. His writing contains uniquely invented languages, epic back stories, and creatures that could only have proceeded from his imagination. Far from the nihilistic and often crude work of the so-called “American Tolkien” George R.R. Martin of “Game of Thrones” fame, Tolkien’s work was full of beauty, whimsy and hidden truth. What most people probably don’t know is that the Nazis were a pretty big fan of Tolkien, too. The Nazis were (as historian Heather Pringle lays out brilliantly in...

What can literary fiction teach us about recent revelations that the National Security Agency has aggressively been gathering massive amounts of data on American citizens? The novel one usually turns to, of course, is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its terrifying vision of the Thought Police. Even President Obama, in response to questions about the NSA, has been forced to deny that the government has engaged in “Big Brother” tactics. Orwell’s book, however, isn’t the most compelling or accurate literary prediction of modern surveillance. That award goes to a less obvious title: J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s most...