75 Years English English until the American's say stop

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. Opening lines of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 1937

However...


In a street in Southampton, England there lived a public house. Not a nasty, dirty, wet pub, filled with the end of cigarettes and an oozy smell, not yet a drt, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was themed on a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.


However, the Orcs of Hollywood movie lawyers didn't like the fact that a quaint pub named after a character from English literature had been there since 1989. I know I had a pint in there while I was a student on a visit to Southampton. Many of the patrons and staff are Tolkien fans, and by that I mean have read the books, and reread the books, and probably not just four of them. 


The lawyers for Middle Earth Enterprises who are trying to profit from the 75 year old icon of English literature because they have a film out later this year that they are charged with marketing. So they want the comfy hobbit water hole to rebrand. 


Rebrand as what?


How about Rivendell? Or maybe in light of the attack on them Minas Tirith? 


The Hobbit is Southampton is hardly likely to detract from the profits of Middle Earth Enterprises. For a start you have to go there, order a drink and enjoy the atmosphere. Apparently they own the copyright including the titles of the works, the names of characters contained within as well as the names of places, objects and events within them, and certain short phrases and sayings from the works.

So I may not be able to review The H*****, and tell you about how well Martin Freeman plays B**** B****** of B** E**. When the film comes out in December. May not be able to talk about T** R*** and how B**** B****** with the help of G****** the G*** and the rest including the dwarfs (see I think they are excluded from Saul Zaentz's copyright.

If you agree that this is just petty legal action and an American trying to encroach on what is English and British heritage then go an like their Save the Hobbit Facebook page.


Footnote There may, or may not, be other pubs called The Hobbit but i'm not telling Middle-earth Enterprises where they may, or may not, be.

Happy Eleventy-tenth or Twelvetieth Birthday?

On the 3rd January 1892 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa where his father was managing a branch of the Bank of Africa (a British owned colonial banking concern).

When he was three his mother Mabel decided that the climate in England would be better for John and his younger brother Hilary Arthur Reuel so they returned while his father carried on in South Africa, but he died the following year of a severe haemorrhage as a result of rheumatic fever. His mother was to die in 1904 as a result of complications from diabetes. Therefore before he was 13 J.R.R. Tolkien found himself orphaned. This may well be why Frodo Baggins lost both his parents in a boating accident when he was twelve and like his creator was orphaned at the same young age.

The boys guardian upon their mother's death was Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. She had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900 to the disgust of many of her Baptist family. Possibly a basis for the separation of Bilbo Baggins from the Sacksville-Bagginses. However, one of the places he visited on holiday growing up as an oprhan was his Aunt Jane at her farm Bag End.

Of course he may well have just be another Oxford Don who was only known to academics of Anglo-Saxon, had he not in the early 1930s started to write a story about imaginary lands and races. Starting with the line "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." The book that was published on 21st September 1937, with the birthday of its hero being the 22nd it was always getting mentioned near my own birthday. This year of course Peter Jackson, who has already brought the sequel The Lord of the Rings to the screen, will be finalising The  Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to present to expectant audiences in December. The second part The Hobbit: There and Back Again is due the following year.

I shall probably not be alone this year is revisiting my first Tolkien book, and the others probably, in preparation for the film that I have been waiting for since the campaign to ensure that Jackson was selected to direct it.

But of course the best reason for celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien's Eleventy-tenth of Twelvetieth birthday is that I can of course show Gandalf's fireworks.



Of course as well as looking back we should also look forward, so here is that trailer which some of us can never tire of.