But talking himself has always fascinated me, ever since I had the privilege of attending his lectures on English at Oxford. Dennis Gerrott talked to Tolkien about his writing and his work, about how this epic mythology was created in the mind of a professor of English language. Love with fire of the hobbitant, I'm with fire of this fair head constructors, and his well-mythology. So you had some sort of scheme on which it was possible to work? What had been so good? I don't know, since it was very hard to get into it, as the hobbit did itself, you know, it was originally about his door, but as soon as he got moving out of the well, he'd have moved it, secondly. So your characters and your story really took charge? I see took charge, I didn't mean that you were completely under the spell or anything of the sort. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to bother reading a dog, no? No, no, no, it doesn't have an obsession anyway. You have a sensation of dumb, but at this point, ABCD only, one of them is right, and you're going to wait and see. Because I had maths, cos, if you're going to have a complicated story, you must. Well, to a map, otherwise you never make a map of it after it. The moons, I think, finally, the moons and sons have worked out according to what they were, they're probably well in 1942, actually, they must have something, they'll begin in 1942, did you write it? No, I'll be honest, I didn't have a desire to do that. It was finally finished just before it was published, right? I wrote it before. About 1940? No, I actually got no more, I actually went to the New Monde, but then, of course, the tremendous other revision, I tried to do that workout twice, and lots of it many times, on a bed in the attic. Well, they couldn't afford the cost of typing. There's some mistakes, too. And also, what I'm using, they just say, that I've heard in my position, because he doesn't know how people think of me now. Some fight with mistakes, him grammar, who they personally use, they use a little over-shock, he is. But that's the, well, it's one where I use this code as a pass positive of this pride. Well, there's a lot of things I can't get. Do you feel any sense of guilt at all, that as a philologist, as a professor of English language, with which you are concerned with the factual sources of language, you've devoted a large part of your life to a fictional thing. No, no, actually, they're doing very well. No, I'd like to. No, no, it's quite a lot of things to visit me. I don't really get a complex about the Lord of the Rings. Have you a particular fondness for these comfortable homey things of life with the shying bodys? Think about a home and pipe and fire and bed. The home liver choose. Haven't you? Haven't you, Professor Thomas? Yes, well, yes, yes, yes. You have a particular fondness, they have a hobby. That's what I feel at home. The shying is very like the kind of world which I first became aware of things. Very like. Which was perhaps more pointed to me, because I wasn't born in it. I was born in Groomfondaine, South Africa. I was very young when I got back, at the same time. Spites into your memory and imagination, even if you don't think it has. If your first Christmas tree is a wilting eucalyptus, and if you're normally told by heat and sand, then the head just to the age of imagination is opening up. Suddenly, find yourself in a quad, work, share, village. I think it in general is a particular level of what you might call central, midland, English. It's a good war, stones and elm trees and small quad rivers and so on. And of course, there's a sort of rusty people there. At what age did you come to England? I was opposed to my husband and he was a bus, three and a half. Pretty poignant, of course, because you see one of the things, why people said they don't remember. It's like constantly putting the same thing on the same plate. Slight changes and they make a blur. But if a child had a sudden break like that, it's conscious. What he tries to do is to fit the new members onto the old. I got a perfect, a bit picture of a house. But I now know that it has a path beautifully worked out pastiche of my own home in Brunford, and my grandmother's house in Birmingham. Because I can still remember going down the road in Birmingham, wondering what happened to the gallery. What happened to the balcony? So, constantly I do remember things extremely early. I can remember bathing in the Indian Ocean. And I was not quite too, and I remember it very clearly. Frodo accepts the burden of the ring. And he embodies as a character the virtues of long suffering and perseverance. And by his actions one might almost say in the Buddhist sense he acquires merit. He becomes, in fact, warmest, a Christ figure. Why did you choose a half-fling, a hobbit for this role? I didn't. I didn't know much choosing. I wrote the Hobbit, which is all I was trying to remember, was to carry on from the point where the hobbit left off. Well, I got hobbits on my hand, didn't I? Indeed, but it's nothing particularly Christlike about Billbeil. Oh, isn't it? No? But in the face of the most appalling danger he's struggled on and continues and angrily and full. But that seems to me why I thought he was more likely to hear me than I was. I've always been in best. We are here surviving the cross of the Indian. Not little more. I've carried you quite small people against. Impossible not. Junk nook, al-Kino, whatever it is. They struggle all. Almost blinding away. I thought that conceivably mid-guard might be middle-earth or have some connection. Oh, yes, they're the same word. Most people have made business taking a little Earth as a particular kind of Earth or as another planet. And the science fiction saw, but it's simply an old-fashioned word for this world. We live it. As it imagines surrounded paruish. It seemed to me that the middle Earth was in a sense, as you say, this world we live in. But this world we live in at a different era. Oh no, at a different stage of imagination. Did you intend in the lower rings that certain races should embody certain principles, the elves wisdom, the dwarfs, the craftsmanship, men, husbandry, and battle and so forth? Didn't it, Dendip? But when you're the guvies people on your hands, you've got to make them different, haven't you? Well, of course, as we all know ultimately, we've only got eye. We've only got humanity to work with. It's the only clay we've got. We should all, at least large part of human race, would like to have greater part of mind, greater part of art by which I mean that the gap between the conception and the part of execution should be shortened, we should like that. And we should like for a longer time, if not in definite time, which is to go on knowing more and making more. Well, therefore we make the elves immortal in a sense. I didn't mean that they were eternally immortal, they're merely very long geese, they're long-deleted, probably last as long as they have the ability of the earth. The dwarfs, of course, quite obvious, could you say in many ways any mind you have the jewels? Well, they're words of arithmetic, obviously, it's a construction piece. I hope it suggests more rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the genus, the genus, it's more of a imagination, but not the, it's more of a courage or a living part. This seems to me to one of the great strengths of the book, I admit to see enormous conglomeration of names. One doesn't get lost. And he's after the first reading, after the second reading of the book, but he doesn't need an index, and I may glad you tell me how, because I gave him a big, big, big trouble. We went master, she, and also, of course, gives me great pleasure. The good name, I always, in the writing, always start to the name. Give me a name and just, produce a story, not the other word, but I acknowledge it. Other languages you know, which way the greatest help you in writing the Lord of Rings? Oh, no. I do, I'll be sort of modern, maybe you know, I should have said that, well, she's always a trek to be a beach-style and so on, more than any other. Even though I felt nice, so I don't contract, so I always want to know what it was about. It seems to me, certainly, that the music of Welsh comes through in the names you've chosen from mountains and for places in general. Do you acknowledge this? Very much. But a much weirder, very potent. I'm going to finish. Is the book to be considered as an allegory? No. Just like allegory, my wife's name. Consider the world declining as the third age declines in your book. And do you see a fourth age for the world at the moment? Our world. Well, first of my age, she's definitely kind of person who's a limpedest, who's one of the most quickly changing periods of a noted history. Surely, it never'd been intently a semi-shape. There's an old tunnel, quality, throughout the hell of the Lord of Rings. In one case, a character says, the story is continued with icing to have dropped out of it. However, everything's declining and it's fading at least towards the end of the third age. Every choice tends to the upsetting of some tradition. Now, this seems to me to be somewhat like Tennyson's, the old order changeeth yielding place to new and God's fulfills himself in many ways. Where is God in the Lord of Rings? He mentioned one, sort of. Is he the one of Raphael? Yes, he is. I, in fact, are thieves. Oh, I'm a wrong Catholic. You love wrong Catholic, you're good. Do you wish to be remembered chiefly by all writings on Philology or other matters, or by the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbits? I shouldn't have saw this one. That's a situation about a number of the toys. They're by the Lord of the Rings. They take it. It won't even be a rather like case of longfellow, would it? They remember, people remember longfellow, right? Higher what? And perhaps I don't know. I'd be grateful to get you to be with me for the best of modern languages.