How WW1 Inspired The Lord of The Rings

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth is perhaps the most captivating fantasy world ever created. His mythology and folklore continue to influence the work of writers, filmmakers, musicians and artists to this day. He first conceived of the idea during the First World War and built his world to examine the fear and courage, despair and hope that he witnessed. So how exactly did this brutal, bloody war help to shape Middle-earth? Dan is joined by John Garth, an award-winning Tolkien biographer and author of Tolkien and the Great War, to tell us about Tolkien's life and how the conflict influenced his writing.

Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Dan Snow, and if you would like Dan Snow's History Hit ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
0:09.7	With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
0:19.4	Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe.
0:24.9	Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, J.R.R.R. Tolkien.
0:33.2	One of the greatest writers of the last hundred years, not only the author of fantasy, like
0:40.0	The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but the inventor, really, of the entire genre of fantasy.
0:45.2	Without him, we would have none of those gigantic fantasy brands across gaming, art, movies,
0:53.2	books that we know and love today. But what in turn made Tolkien?
0:59.0	Well, I'm going to find out. I'm going to talk to John Garth. He's a writer, he's an expert,
1:03.9	he's a biographer of Tolkien. He is in Oxford at the time of this conversation. And he's walking
1:09.1	those very same cloisters and corridors that
1:11.8	Tolkien would have walked. He's probably gone to the Eagle and Child pub where Tolkien used to sit
1:15.2	and drink beers with C.S. Lewis every Tuesday when they lived there. John talks me through
1:20.9	Tolkien's early life, where he grew up, how his bucolic rural childhood in the Midlands of England
1:26.1	came to impact his writing, the way he wrote about the Shire.
1:30.5	And of course, how the First World War, the smash landscape of the Somme, changed him and his writing and ideas.
1:39.4	Many of you, I'm sure, are fans of the Lord of the Rings.
1:41.5	I certainly love the books growing up.
1:43.5	But I do think,
1:48.7	having had this conversation with John, I feel like my appreciation for those pros for those books is now going to be hugely enriched. So, enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on
1:56.4	Hiroshima. God save the king. No black quaint unity till there is first than black unity.
2:02.8	Never to go to war with one another again.
	...

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