One hundred and twenty-seventh Roving Ranger

Events & Shows

The Lure of Middle-earth (Opens in a new window), “The worlds biggest fan organised convention for Middle-earth CCG and Lord of the Rings LCG”, is happening this weekend in a German medieval castle with Ted Nasmith as GoH.

The Wade Center has the Aubrey Buster 2025 Hansen Lectures (Opens in a new window), either online already or still upcoming, on C.S. Lewis.

The carnival at Viareggio (Opens in a new window), Italy, had a huge allegorical float titled "The Last Heroes Of Innocence” in which the Witch-king of Angmar was depicted (Opens in a new window). [Instagram; official website (Opens in a new window), see 2nd category floats]

Review of the Hobbit stage version (Opens in a new window) at the TOY, Buffalo.

Feel like winning tickets to the LotR musical (Opens in a new window)? [West Australian]

The opening of the Tolkien Tapestries exhibition is linked with a conference at the Sorbonne Nouvelle: L'œuvre de JRR Tolkien et l'écologie (Opens in a new window) [March 20]

Mareike Huber (Opens in a new window) will present ‘Languages on the Move: Tolkien's Invented Languages and Their Use in Adaptations’ (Opens in a new window) on March 14 at Corpus Christi College.

The Tolkien Lecture in Oxford has announced its next speaker: Zen Cho (Opens in a new window).

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Opens in a new window) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Opens in a new window).

Scholarship & Fandom

The subreddit r/fantasy does polls of favourite books; this redditor did a different calculation for 2014-2025, having J.R.R. Tolkien rank third (Opens in a new window).

Miriam Ellis has Marcho, Blanco and Dark Ages Hobbit Hardihood (Opens in a new window).

The Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington (Opens in a new window) has a blog post titled Drawing Tolkien: Art Inspired by Tolkien’s Legendarium (Opens in a new window) on Tree by Tolkien (Colin Wilson; h/t Tolkien Gleanings (Opens in a new window)).

Volume 20, issue 2 (Opens in a new window), of the Journal of Tolkien Research has added more items.

‘Reduced to nonsense’: JRR Tolkien’s irritation with typist revealed in archive (Opens in a new window)[Guardian; h/t Andrew Wells]

Merchandise & Franchise

Interesting: ‘You Shall Not Pass’: ‘Lord of the Fries’ Trademark Dispute Has a Winner (Opens in a new window) [Variety Australia; original report with TheAge (Opens in a new window) (paywall)]

Any article on the wonderful Jed Brophy gets a listing here: The Only Actor Who Has Appeared In Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit & The Rings Of Power (Opens in a new window)[SlashFilm]

Lord of the Rings Online's 64-bit Server Transfers Temporarily Disabled After Slow Processing and Issues (Opens in a new window) [MMORPG]

Ablaze Media will be selling the Kalevala (Opens in a new window) and Tolkien (Opens in a new window) graphic novels as a bundle called J.R.R. Tolkien Genesis Collected Set this May, 28; preorders available.

The Phantom Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary (by Kakawow) has collectible cards with figures from the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” film trilogies (Opens in a new window)(h/t Tolkien Visual Collecting Guide (Opens in a new window))

Rick’s Bakery (Opens in a new window) in Fayetteville, Arkansas, knows how to sell its workshops: why not do a hobbit house (Opens in a new window)?

A petition to reopen Monolith Studios (Opens in a new window) had 16 signatures at the time of writing [Change.org]

Full Commentary from Cast and Crew on 'The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim' (Opens in a new window) [Youtube]

The latest custom keyboard by DROP is Gondor (Opens in a new window).

Inter alia

Shrek 5 has a teaser (Opens in a new window).

Typewriters, stinky carpets and crazy press trips: what it was like working on video game mags in the 1980s (Opens in a new window) [Guardian]

Michael Whelan has 1976: Year in Review (Part One) (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

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