So many died wretched anonymous deaths in no man’s land, bleeding away, parched by an intolerable thirst. The soldiers waited for death in mud-filled holes in the ground, terrified of the day when they would be ordered over the top. Killing had become an industrial process and flesh and blood could not match high explosive shells and machine gun bullets. Warfare had changed forever in the 100 years since Waterloo. They had left their homes for the first time in 1914, singing as they marched away towards the great adventure, only to find hell on the other side of the English Channel. In the small English villages where I grew up the war memorials were engraved with long lists of men who had never come back from the trenches.
I had always wanted to write about World War One. Interviewers understandably wanted to know what it was like to be JRR Tolkien’s grandson and so I mined my memories until they became stale: gold turned to dust in my hand.
Writers cannot succeed without publicity, and my name was my passport to gaining media attention. Somewhat ironically, I soon found that I needed my grandfather to sell my books. Was I to be Simon Tolkien or just the grandson of a great man? I had thought of my grandfather as an obstacle he had become the great tree casting the long shadow from which I wanted to escape. I thought my first book was a masterpiece, but the unanimous negative reaction of numerous literary agents on both sides of the Atlantic soon convinced me of my error! But I persisted and slowly found some measure of success. My father has devoted himself tirelessly to editing my grandfather’s unpublished writing for publication in the 43 years since his death and this has so far run to more than 20 books.Īs a man, I felt dwarfed: how could I not? And in my own middle age spurred me on to have something of my own to know myself by to become a writer myself.
Later I came to realise that my grandfather was not just the author of The Lord of the Rings but also an intellectual giant, who spoke and read numerous languages and was a world-renowned expert in his chosen field. I was too young of course to wonder then about how he reconciled the pantheistic world that he had created with his own fervent Christianity. There was a clue here to his personality: an impressive confidence in his own opinions and a steely self-belief that had nothing to do with the avuncular, affectionate grandfather that I knew.
0 kommentar(er)
