All language subtitles for Tolkien: Die wahre Geschichte der Ringe.eng

As John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
created his fantasy universe

called Middle-earth,

hardly anyone could have
anticipated how successful

and influential it would become.

Without Tolkien,

there would be no J.K. Rowling,
no George Martin or Game of Thrones,

no role-playing games, no Star Wars.

He even influenced The Beatles
and Led Zeppelin.

He influenced so many,
but what inspired him?

What is the true story of the rings?

This film is a quest for traces...

In the landscapes, the history

and the myths
of his homeland England.

Everybody wants to discover

the one place that sparked

Tolkien's imagination.

Tolkien's fans really want

this Middle-earth mythology

to be real
or to at least be inspired

by real things.
There is a real desire.

Less known
are Tolkien's personal encounters

with the history
of the 20th century,

for example, as a soldier

in the First World War.

Tolkien was here between

the 25th and the 29th

of July 1916.

If we were to go back
more than 100 years,

we would likely already be
under heavy fire here.

His greatest journey took him

to Switzerland in 1911.

A very real,

even life-threatening adventure.

That was a near-death

sort of experience.

We could have had
the end of Tolkien at that point.

We're very lucky that we didn't.

Tolkien's books are unique.

Fantasy and world literature.

Timeless. Profound. Immortal. Cult.

Brought to the world by a professor

while marking exam papers:

One page of this

particular paper
was left blank, glorious,

nothing to read. So,
I scribble on it. I can't think why.

"In a hole in the ground
lived a Hobbit."

I am in fact a Hobbit myself,

in all but size.

I like gardens, trees

and unmechanised farmlands.

I smoke a pipe
and enjoy eating.

I like and even dare

to wear ornamental waistcoats
in these dull days.

I am fond of mushrooms.

I have a very simple
sense of humour.

I go to bed late
and get up late, when possible.

I do not travel much.

Well, he often said,
I'm very much a Hobbit, you know?

Sometimes that's a bit of a joke
with the waistcoats,

the pipe, you know. But it's...

They're based in a...

part of his life
that was kind of idyllic,

that turn of the century, you know,
late-Victorian England.

That sort of rural idyll.

Today, when many people think
of Middle-earth,

they mostly imagine what
Peter Jackson showed us

of New Zealand

in the Tolkien films.

Tolkien's rural idyll
was the West Midlands,

"England's green and pleasant land,"

as he called his homeland
in the heart of Britain.

Wow.

Can you believe this?

Can you believe this place?

It's supernatural.

So this is the doorway

to Saint Edward's Church.

In Stow-on-the-Wold.

We don't know for certain

that Tolkien ever came here,

so this is... it's only a theory

that maybe this was
a kind of inspiration

for the West Gate of Moria,

it's called Durin's Doors.

Very famously,
Durin's Doors are secret.

By the time of the Third Age,
they are hidden away,

and they need a magic spell

for them to open.

The magic spell is "speak, friend,

and enter". Mellon,

in the Elvish language.

Ancient languages, names
and their stories.

Tolkien was obsessed.

As a child, as a student
and as a professor in Oxford,

he even used family trips
for research purposes.

They would take weekends
and drive out in the countryside

and look exactly for
places like this.

So, Rollright Stones,

it's kind of a very strange,
unusual name.

One of the theories,
the one that I like,

is that it's actually
an ancient British word

before the old English language
comes here.

That's one of the things Tolkien
is most interested in.

This layering of names,

the layering of time, of history

on places like these.

Not far from Oxford,
near Dragon Hill,

is the Uffington White Horse,

a figure over 100 metres long,

carved into the chalk hillside.

A horse.

We're looking out
towards Oxfordshire,

the land that was sort of closest

to Tolkien's heart.

But this carving

would have been carved
thousands of years ago,

and every age probably gave it

a new legend, a new mythology.

And we know by the time of
the Anglo Saxon kingdoms

that this was the heartland
of a kingdom

called Mercia. And Mercia

"The men of the march",

is the inspiration
for the kingdom of Rohan.

The people of Rohan,
the men of Rohan

have Anglo Saxon names

and they call themselves
"The men of the march".

And they speak
in old English language

and they quote from Beowolf.

Tolkien, a linguist by profession,

gave a groundbreaking lecture
on the Old English

heroic epic Beowulf.

Elements of it appear in Rohan,

the equestrian kingdom

in The Lord of the Rings.

In Rohan,

the symbol, the banner,

is a white horse on a green field.

This is no accident.
So this is

the founding white horse

of the Kingdom of Rohan.

It is also the ancestor
of Shadowfax,

the horse of King Théoden
and eventually the horse of Gandalf.

Many of Tolkien's iconic characters

contain references and allusions.

Gandalf, for example,

one of the five great wizards
of Middle-earth,

derives his name from
the Old Icelandic saga "Edda".

Tolkien was fascinated by
the old myths of Europe.

In the landscapes of
the English Midlands,

traces of them are everywhere,
overlapping with

millennia-old stories and history.

So, he could draw from
his neighbourhood

to make

Middle-earth

come alive.

It's hard to travel through

the Cotswolds, this wooded area

surrounding Oxford,

without thinking of the Shire.

Whether you're talking about England

or you're talking about Tolkien,

kind of all roads lead here,

to Wayland's Smithy.

This place is also important

because it's one of
the ancient places

that we know Tolkien visited.

Named about 1500 years ago

by Anglo-Saxon settlers

after the Germanic demigod Wayland,

it later became

"Wayland's Smithy."

It's highly likely Tolkien

had burial mounds

like this in mind

while writing his "legendarium."

One of the really curious theories
was that

traditions across
the British Isles about a

fairy folk who had lived

underground in mounds

may have originated
with the real people

who had been here.
The Celts.

And who had

been so shy that they were only

vaguely known on the peripheries of

the incomers, civilisation.

A small people, perhaps, who could

vanish in the flash of an eye,
you know?

And I'm sure that this
is where Tolkien gets

the idea of the Hobbits from.

Tolkien is very clear
that these real-life places

are not the same places

he describes in his legendarium.

But he wants to describe
that feeling

of being there,
close to something ancient,

knowing somehow

that many lives
have passed through here,

that many stories
have been told here.

And I think we do the same thing

when we follow
in Tolkien's footsteps.

We want to imagine

what he imagined when he was here.

On the one hand, Tolkien creatively
uses his environment,

historical sites, what he learnt

and what he experienced.
But he was also shaped by

traumatic events from his childhood.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien,

was born in 1892

in the Orange Free State,

in what is now South Africa.

His father worked for
an English bank there.

When Tolkien was three,

his mother returned to England
with him and his brother, Hilary.

They would never see
their father again,

he died shortly afterwards.

He talks about that
in his late interviews, actually,

about that huge contrast
between the landscape of

South Africa
and what he sees in Birmingham.

He talks a lot
about the rustic people

there as well and their accents.

Remember, Tolkien
is a middle class child, right?

He's a sort of
upper-middle-class child, really,

transposed into an environment
where there are more rural people.

And the rural Hobbits are very much

a representation of that.

His mother settled with the two boys
Hilary and Ronald

near Sarehole Mill,

then on the rural outskirts

of Birmingham.

For the children,
it was a world full of wonder.

It was a kind of lost paradise.

There was an old mill
that really

did grind corn with two millers,

a great big pond with swans on it,

a sandpit,
a wonderful dell with flowers,

a few old-fashioned village houses

and, further away,
a stream with another mill.

Any time you see
Tolkien's own drawings,

his own depictions
of what he thinks

Hobbiton looks like,

you always see a river

and a mill with its water wheel.

The central location of that mill
in his drawings

links to the central location
of this mill in his memories.

Ronald and Hilary created

early games and stories
about witches and ogres.

They named the young miller,

who was always covered in flour,
the "White Ogre"

and a farmer who once chased them,
the "Black Ogre."

They intertwined their surroundings

with dangerous,
child-eating creatures

drawn from popular
English fairy tales.

Mabel Tolkien
was a very educated woman

for the standards of the period,

She was up to date
with children's books at the time.

This is just after the first
golden age of children's literature.

So we know that Tolkien read
Andrew Lang,

the Coloured Fairy Books.

He knew about the Arthurian legend

from her.
He learnt languages from her,

the linguistic element
is particularly important,

obviously, for Tolkien's
later development, the fact that

he was being taught languages,
but he was

getting interested in
how languages work.

When Ronald was eight years old,

they moved away from
this idyllic area

so he would not have to walk
six kilometres

to Birmingham's
King Edward's School.

Now he lived in the city!

Fascinated, he discovered
Welsh words

on coal wagons
destined for industry.

These words sparked his interest
in developing artificial languages.

One of these, Sindarin,

was based on Welsh.

Another, Quenya,
was inspired by Finnish.

Early in life, Ronald

and Hilary learnt that nothing
stays the same.

Their hard lesson:

Things can always get worse.

Their father died
before he could follow

the family to England,
when Ronald was four.

At 12, Ronald also lost his mother.

The Tolkien brothers
became orphans.

But it seems there is this
trauma childhood.

So it's the trauma of losing
a father, then losing a mother

to whom he was very, very close

and I think there is this melancholy

and this general tendency to

at times fall into
swings of pessimism,

are definitely there
throughout his life.

And yes, I suppose you see that

via characters such as Frodo,
who is traumatised

and never quite recovers.

Frodo. Frodo Baggins,
after all,

lives in Bag End in the Shire

with his foster father Bilbo.

Like Tolkien, he is an orphan

and knows
his creator's pessimism well.

So, yes, I think I think
there is a very

important part of this

inner melancholy, inner pessimism

feeding into Middle-earth.

And I think what that's
what makes it enduring as well.

If we had a very linear

narrative in which everything
gets resolved at the end,

I don't think we would have
such an enduring story.

In many ways, life doesn't work
like that very often.

The brothers were assigned
a guardian:

Father Francis Morgan.

Ronald and Hilary remained close

all their lives.

His brother Hilary,
two years younger...

didn't have that...
He left school

as soon as he was able to

and went to work on his aunt's farm.

And later in life
had his own farm.

I think there's a touch
of Sam Gamgee about him,

and I think that, you know,
that reflects that

there was an ongoing bond
between the two.

This may be a key
to Tolkien's ability

to empathise with people
who are not like himself.

Under Father Francis' care,

Ronald met Edith Bratt,
three years his senior.

When they grew close,
Father Francis

forbade the minor
from seeing Edith

until he turned 21.

His first great love

became a forbidden love.

His love for nature,
however, was unbridled.

Ronald liked to climb trees

and was distraught

when one of these trees,
an old willow

near the mill, was cut down
and left to rot.

This tree would later reappear

in Tolkien's work
as "Old Man Willow,"

a character who fights back
against humans.

In The Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien turns trees

into active beings.
He goes beyond simply giving them

a mystical history, as Shakespeare

did in Macbeth.

Tolkien wanted more.

Their part in the story is due,
I think,

to my bitter disappointment
and disgust from schooldays

with the shabby use made
in Shakespeare of the coming

of "Great Birnam Wood
to high Dunsinane hill".

I longed to devise
a setting in which

the trees
might really march to war.

Thus, Tolkien created the Ents,
tree shepherds.

Ancient beings

who could walk, speak

and, when absolutely necessary,

even go to war.

Few tasks are as pressing
for humanity

as avoiding climate catastrophe,

making Tolkien's vision

of intelligent, speaking trees

with a clear purpose

all the more prescient.

In Peter Jackson's film,

The Two Towers,

the Ents become living beings

who have had enough.

Come, my friends.

The Ents are going to war.

It is likely

that we go to our doom.

The last march of the Ents!

That nature rebels is unsurprising,

especially when we look at
depictions of the "Black Country,"

an industrial region
north of Birmingham.

It really was a dark
and grim region.

Nature despoiled

the lives of the
workers there, you know,

they would not have been healthy.
They would not have been long lived.

So I think that that's a primal

influence on Tolkien and his idea of

what's right and wrong in the world.

And I don't think
it trivialises things

to point out that

if you translate the Black Country
into Elvish,

you get Mordor.

The backdrop of the Black Country

seems like a model
for the dark places

in Middle-earth

that embody evil.

The worlds of Sauron and Saruman.

The Lord of the Rings
is undoubtedly critical

of industrialisation.
Saruman serves as a champion

of industry.

Mordor, with its dark wasteland

choked by smoke resembles
a massive industrial site.

A land that is no longer green.

A land covered in clouds of smoke,

in which red lights flicker.

It looks like a huge,
giant smelting works.

I'm from Saarland,

I live next door to Mordor.
I know what it looks like!

Just look at the Dillinger Hütte.

Saruman, once a "good"
wizard like Gandalf,

joins forces with Sauron
in Lord of the Rings,

producing orcs
in his Isengard forges

and preparing for war

against Middle-earth's
peaceful peoples.

Tolkien's expansive knowledge,
which would make

his Middle-earth
so rich and complex,

began forming during his time

at King Edward's School.

He delivered lectures to his peers

in Old English, Greek and Gothic.

Alongside three close friends,
he founded

a debating club,

TCBS,

or the Tea Club Barrovian Society,

creating a lifelong bond.

The group consisted of
Wiseman, Smith,

Gilson and Tolkien,

four young men

determined to renew

the world morally.

Idealism was common

for 19- and 20-year-olds
who saw the world before them

and were likely bound for

the universities of
either Cambridge or Oxford,

with careers ahead of them,

expecting to make a difference.

They belonged to the elite.

This included membership
in the school's cadet corps.

For now, they only wore uniforms
for group photos.

But within a few years,
World War I

would become a grim reality
for the cadets.

At this time, they were
still writing poems and essays...

Young Tolkien made an impression

with his vast knowledge,

commenting on the Finnish
national epic,

the Kalevala,

and comparing
the Icelandic sagas

of the Völsungs
to Homer's Odyssey.

In the decades that followed,

all this

would find its way into
his immense body of work

on Middle-earth.

It all began in 1937
with The Hobbit.

One of the illustrations
shows Hobbiton,

complete with a mill
and the landscape of his childhood.

The title page also references

another major influence on his work.

Only in his later years

did Tolkien write letters
to his sons,

revealing how much
the single major journey

of his youth influenced him.

Tolkien's journey
in the summer of 1911

took him to the Swiss Alps.

This was a time when
the Swiss Alps would have been

the frontier of

experience for someone
from England of his class.

And also, this was a time

when the romantic ethos

was very important.
So the sense that

mountains were a place

where you went to experience
something that

was sublime rather than
pretty or beautiful.

They gave him a sense of awe,

of the immensity

of the natural world within which

we are tiny and vulnerable figures.

Tolkien was in Switzerland in 1911,
in the summer.

He travelled for about a month

on foot through the mountains,

Bernese Oberland and the Valais.

It was a very mixed group,

with many women and even children,

a rather colourful troupe

with funny hats and skirts.

It's hard to imagine today

that people would go hiking
like that.

They were flatland tourists

and for the first time in his life,

19-year-old Ronald saw

real mountains.

About eight years ago,
I travelled to

the Lauterbrunnen Valley.
Then I came across information

that Tolkien had been there

and was inspired by it
for Rivendell.

I then stumbled upon
Tolkien's letters

and it was,

how should I say,
really a "wow' moment

for me because I saw

how profoundly this trip
influenced Tolkien.

The Hobbit Bilbo's journey

from Rivendell to the other side
of the Misty Mountains,

including the glissade
down the slithering stones

into the pine woods,

is based on my adventures in 1911.

The annus mirabilis of sunshine.

The similarity between

the Lauterbrunnen Valley

and Tolkien's drawing of Rivendell,

the seat of the Elven realm
in Middle-earth, is striking.

There is also the river Lautwasser,

known in English as Loudwater,

which flows through Rivendell

and is called Bruinen in Elvish.

A connection to the place name
Lauterbrunnen

has also been suggested.

It is interesting because it shows

how Tolkien thought

as a philologist.

In The Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien brings much of

the real magical beauty
of the Lauterbrunnen Valley

into his fantasy world.

He found his friends

sitting in a porch on the side
of the house looking east.

Shadows had fallen
in the valley below,

but there was still a light
on the faces

of the mountains far above.

The air was warm.

The sound of running
and falling water was loud

and the evening was filled with
a faint scent

of trees and flowers,

as if summer still lingered
in Elrond's gardens.

In a similarly idyllic
mountainous world,

Tolkien gathers the main characters
in The Lord of the Rings,

the Fellowship.

At Elrond's house,
the Half-Elven Lord

of Rivendell,

representatives of all
the free peoples come together.

From there, men, Hobbits,

a dwarf, an elf

and the wizard Gandalf set out

together to defeat evil.

They must first cross

the Misty Mountains.

In reality, Tolkien had experienced

only one mountain range
of such magnitude:

the Swiss Alps.

The first part of his journey
is described,

many years later,

in letters to his sons
in great detail.

Tolkien began his journey here

in Interlaken,

then continued to Lauterbrunnen,

from there up to Mürren

and into the far end
of the Lauterbrunnen Valley,

crossing the Kleine Scheidegg
to Grindelwald,

then over the Grosse Scheidegg
to Meiringen,

before presumably hiking through
the Aare Gorge

to the Grimsel Pass

and then over into the Valais.

Colin Brooks-Smith,
a fellow traveller,

also wrote memoirs of the journey

and he particularly mentions

the second part of the trip.

There are also guest books
from two huts

where we know for sure
that Tolkien stayed

because he signed them.

One of these huts

is still only accessible
on foot today.

It takes several hours to hike

to the Hotel Obersteinberg
in the Bernese Oberland,

with an ascent
of more than 600 metres

from the valley floor.

Difficulty level today: moderate.

Tolkien travelled mostly on foot,
as he himself wrote,

across many high passes,

over a month-long period.

It was truly an enormous journey,

covering perhaps 300 kilometres.

On 5th August 1911,

he reached the Hotel Obersteinberg.

So, here,

we have Tolkien's signature.

That's quite something,

to see the real signature.

The book's a bit worse for wear.

It's ancient.

Yes.

Among the 12 companions
were six women,

including Tolkien's aunt.

The young widow
had invited her nephew

on the Alpine adventure.

Jane Neave, his mother's sister,
was a huge influence,

partly because
she was like his mother,

very, very intelligent.

She was a warden
of St Andrews University

at a time when women
in academia were a rarity.

She's a very important character.

It has been argued that
because she led

the 1911 holiday trek

through the Swiss Alps,

that she may have inspired
aspects of Gandalf,

and who knows?

I've even heard people

aware of this say,

"Well, in essence,

Gandalf is a feminine character."

Gandalf, the wizard,

inspired by a woman?

It's possible,
though in Tolkien's time,

the character became a man.

As always with his work,

Gandalf likely had many influences.

The Germanic god Odin,

the Eastern European
folklore figure Rübezahl,

mountain spirits like one
depicted on a postcard

Tolkien kept by the artist
Josef Madeler

and even his Aunt Jane,

all combined
with Tolkien's imagination

to create Gandalf!

Gandalf is many things at once.

Gandalf is also Christ.

The Balrog burns him,
but he returns.

Gandalf undergoes a resurrection,

transforming from Gandalf the Grey

to Gandalf the White.

This is clearly

a reference to Christ.

One of Tolkien's major influences
is the Bible,

which, given

his deep Catholic faith,
is unsurprising

but often overlooked.

In Switzerland, Tolkien experienced

creation's grandeur.

Wherever one looks,
there are views

reminiscent of Middle-earth scenery.

Here, he saw the three famous peaks

of the Bernese Alps:

Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.

The next likely stop on his journey

was the Aare Gorge,

which evokes the entrance
to the underground realms

of Moria, the Dwarven kingdom.

It was already
a tourist attraction back then,

with a path

through the gorge

that was well-developed,

though not quite like today.

There was also

an interesting bridge

crossing the gorge,

which was quite daring at the time.

It's been suggested

that it might have inspired

the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

in Moria.

Moria is a major setting

in The Lord of the Rings.

Underground halls where battles rage

between dwarves and orcs,

between the Fellowship
and evil forces.

When Tolkien was in Switzerland,

the Lötschberg Tunnel
was being built

and the breakthrough happened
in the spring of that year.

Many workers died

during its construction,

buried within the tunnel.

This sense of horror
may have also inspired

Tolkien's depiction of Moria.

For the English,
mountains and gorges

weren't just new but also

introduced the dangers
of the alpine world.

On the evening of 21st August 1911,

the group encountered
a fierce thunderstorm.

Surrounded by snow-covered peaks,

an experience that left
a lasting impression.

In The Hobbit,

written over 20 years later,

this "thunder battle"

feels vividly real.

More terrible still
are thunder and lightning

in the mountains at night,

when storms come up
from East and West

and make war.

The lightning splinters on the peaks

and rocks shiver

and great crashes split the air

and go rolling and tumbling
into every cave

and hollow.

In The Hobbit,
it's perhaps most striking

when the group encounters
the tempest,

they experience these stone battles,

thunder battles of stone giants,

or imagine that

this is the case.

It's left open

to the reader's imagination

whether these were actual giants

or that it merely

sounded like it.

A few days later, the group found
themselves in immediate danger.

Large rocks broke off
from a cliff face.

The woman in front of Tolkien
saved herself by jumping forward.

A boulder crashed
just ahead of Tolkien

and plummeted into the abyss.

In a letter written decades later,
he mentioned

that his "unmanly knees"
were trembling.

It's the elemental force

of storms, lightning,

rockslides and avalanches.

All of it a direct confrontation
with nature's raw power.

It translates well

because he adopts

the Hobbit's perspective.

These are really characters

who are non-heroic

and physically small,

naturally struggling with snowdrifts
and such.

The man who later described himself

as "a Hobbit" was,

like the companions in his books,
nearly lost in the mountains.

It's only later on that I think
it really sinks in

that that was a near death
sort of experience.

We could have had the end
of J.R.R. Tolkien

at that particular point and we were
very lucky that we didn't.

The profound impact
of the experiences on his journey

through the Bernese Oberland
and the Valais is evident

in a watercolour painting
he created

just a few years later.

When Tolkien was in the Valais,

there were several
major forest fires.

Articles vividly describe

the fire horns sounding,

church bells ringing

and masses being held

at 2:00 a.m.

We might see impressions
of these fires

in his painting "Fantasy Landscape."

These existentially
threatening experiences

contributed to his Swiss journey

taking on an increasingly
surreal, mythic quality.

A key moment

in shaping the landscapes

of Middle-earth.

The second guestbook Tolkien signed

is still accessible only
with a mountain guide.

The ascent to the Bertol Hut

is a memorable climb.

Colin Brook-Smith,
a travel companion,

mentioned that the whole group

had no mountaineering experience.

The Swiss guides essentially

pulled them up this final part.

The Bertol Hut stands at

3311 metres above sea level.

On 25th August 1911,

it was the group's destination.

Back then,

the ascent took seven hours.

The mountain landscape has changed
dramatically since.

We're seeing

far more rockfalls due to
permafrost melting and so on.

The Alps are changing,
as is the entire world.

In the last two years,

the pace of change
has accelerated dramatically.

I never thought I'd see the Alps
without glaciers.

But it's happening

and we'll see it soon.

In 1911, the glaciers

nearly reached the hut.

This could be exactly from the time
when Tolkien's group was here.

Yes.

But do you see

- the difference with the glacier?
- Yes.

Here is a copy

of the old Bertol Hut guestbook

with Tolkien's original signature.

Do you know Tolkien?

Now I do.

From the Bertol Hut,
you can see the Matterhorn

on the horizon.

It's quite possible that Tolkien
had the Matterhorn in mind

when he described Mount Doom
in The Lord of the Rings,

the mountain where the battle

between good and evil is decided.

Of course, there are other traces...

During my research,

I also found Mont Miné.

This mountain
is particularly fascinating.

Its shape strongly resembles

a sketch by Tolkien

of Mount Doom,

a rather steep volcano.

This sketch in one of
his original manuscripts

shows that the Swiss journey
stayed with Tolkien for decades.

Really, any mountain scene

that you encounter in The Hobbit
or Lord of the Rings,

you can bet that the Swiss Alps

have got in there deep

into the bones of that passage.

And yeah, it made
a permanent mark on Tolkien

and he's able to draw on that
as a resource.

Because Tolkien says that
in his own letters too.

"I wish I could see
those Swiss Alps once more."

Peter Jackson's film
The Fellowship of the Ring

captures how Tolkien
channels this longing

through his character Bilbo Baggins.

I want to see mountains again,

mountains, Gandalf,

and then find somewhere quiet
where I can

finish my book.

Some of it remains speculation.

Not every mountain, path

or glacier from the Alps

is directly transposed into
Middle-earth,

despite fans' wishes.

Still, the trip to Switzerland,

after his childhood experiences
in England,

represented the second
major source of experience

Tolkien would draw upon.

A lot of writers do that.

They've been somewhere.
They go, oh, well, I remember that.

I can now just describe that shop

and, you know,
and that's my perfect setting

because I don't have
to think it through.

I've got everything there.

But I think in the Swiss Alps

there's an element
of the sublime there,

the overpowering vastness
of nature

which he takes from. So he's not
just taking the physical description

he takes the emotional description
from it as well.

After the Alpine tour,

Tolkien began his studies at Oxford.

Initially, he studied Classics,

Greek and Roman literature,
and Latin.

Soon, he switched to philology.

His mother's early influence
on his love for languages

would become his professional focus.

Medieval literature, Norse sagas,

Arthurian legend, Beowulf, the Edda

and the Song of Roland.

Tolkien absorbed all of it.

Together with his close friends
from school,

the "TCBS,"

he pursued his artistic endeavours.

But Great Britain's entry
into World War I

in August 1914

would disrupt the young men's plans.

Many enlisted immediately.

Tolkien hesitated.

He was an orphan with no money.
He wasn't a wealthy heir.

He needed a job, which required
completing his degree at Oxford.

He stayed there
and he was called a coward.

He even received the white feather,

a symbol handed out,
often by women,

to shame men who hadn't

immediately volunteered
for the front.

It was a form of public humiliation,
a way

to pressure men into enlisting

by means of group pressure.

With the threat of combat looming,

Tolkien focused on poetry

and his Elvish languages,

a creative surge
without the epic scale

of his later novels.

During a visit
to his Aunt Jane's farm,

he produced watercolours
and sketches.

Influenced by his Swiss journey

and the outbreak of war,
Tolkien developed

a unique artistic style.

Tolkien applied his principle
of "sub-creation"

both literarily and artistically.

We worked with the National Library

to find visual equivalents
to his work,

but the experts concluded

that Tolkien's art was so singular

that no real comparisons

could be made.

Almost all his university friends
were now at the front.

The societal pressure mounted
on those who hesitated,

like Tolkien.

In 1916,
he enlisted for military service.

Before heading to war,

Tolkien had one private matter
to settle:

seeing his "forbidden" love,

Edith, again.

When they met, Tolkien was 16

and Edith 19.

Father Francis

found out

about their relationship
and forbade it.

Ronald, who was dependent
on him

both financially
and for his education,

abided by this prohibition.

On the evening of his 21st birthday,

Ronald wrote a letter to Edith

and re-established contact with her.

In the meantime,
she had moved away

and was engaged to another man

but she agreed to meet Tolkien.

Edith broke off her engagement
and married Ronald.

By then, he was 24

and an officer
in the Lancashire Fusiliers.

His marching orders were imminent.

Their honeymoon was brief,

but Tolkien had a specific
destination in mind.

The romantic outing
led them to a gorge

on the southwest coast of England.

Ronald wanted to show Edith
a natural wonder:

Cox's Cave.

Ronald and Edith
had just been married

and they knew

that it wasn't going to be long

before he had to go off
and fight the war.

And you can imagine

one last happy moment
before he goes off to war,

maybe never to come back.

These caves will seem familiar
to Tolkien readers.

The grottos beneath "Helm's Deep,"

the refuge of dwarves and men
in The Lord of the Rings,

bear a striking resemblance
to Cox's Cave.

Gimli even raves about it:

Then, Legolas,

gems and crystals

and veins of precious ore
glint in the polished walls,

and the light glows through
folded marbles, shell-like,

translucent as the living hands
of Queen Galadriel.

There are columns of white
and saffron

and dawn-rose, Legolas.

Gimli, a dwarf,

and Legolas, an elf,

are two of the companions who form
the Fellowship of the Ring

alongside the Hobbit Frodo.

It's really a warm moment,
a really special moment in the story

and in both of their characters.

They agree that if
they survive this war,

they will visit
these places together.

And you can imagine Ronald

and Edith making themselves
a similar promise.

If we survive this,

we'll come back here.

Tolkien didn't know
if he would ever see Edith again.

On 4th June 1916,

he crossed over to France,

to the war.

He later described the crossing:

"It felt like death."

Photographs, military records

and maps allow us

to accurately reconstruct

Tolkien's time at the front.

Tolkien arrived by train

from the north to Amiens,

then continued to Albert.

From Albert,

his first posting was at Boiselle,

where he encountered the front

for the first time.

From battalion records,

we can trace the area

of the Somme where Tolkien

was stationed during these months.

The Somme region

remains a surreal landscape today,

with war scars everywhere.

The troops faced each other here
for months.

Tolkien and his friends
from the TCBS

were in this war.

Three of them here,
in northern France.

We're standing
at the Lochnagar Crater,

the result of one
of many mines detonated

on the morning of July 1st,

which started
the Battle of the Somme.

At 7:28 a.m.,

27 tonnes of explosives

went off here.

Finally,

July 1st

went down in history

as one of the bloodiest days
of the Somme.

One of the many, many people

who died on that first day

was Robert Quilter Gilson,
called Rob,

one of Tolkien's closest friends.

Nearly 20,000 British soldiers

died on the first day
of the battle alone

and around 40,000 were wounded.

Almost all

of Tolkien's "lost generation"
perished.

Tolkien became his battalion's
signals officer.

So he was in charge
of communications

for, say, 700 or 800 men

in the Battle of the Somme.

It would mean

that Tolkien's chances of survival
were higher

than other officers of his rank.

At the "Musée Somme" in Albert,

the traces of the war can be seen.

Tolkien and his friends
experienced it as an apocalypse.

Geoffrey was at an outpost

at night

and wrote an intensely
emotional letter.

He didn't expect

to survive the night

and essentially entrusted

Tolkien with a mission.

He wrote to Tolkien

in the letter's final lines,

"Say the things I may no longer

be able to say:

carry it out."

Tolkien would carry out

that mission in his works,

creating a legacy
of the four friends

of the "Tea Club Barrovian Society"

from their school days
in Birmingham.

Their friendship and the war
at the Somme

were immortalized
in the fantasy world

of Middle-earth.

You can especially see it

in Tolkien's landscape descriptions,
for example,

in the chapter
"The Siege of Gondor."

The orcs dig trenches.

They entrench themselves.

The English original

even uses the word "trenches",

the same word for military dugouts.

In this chapter,

the narrative tone

becomes very modern.

It mentions comrades

and even furlough for Pippin,

reflecting how these experiences,

even subconsciously, resurfaced
in Tolkien's writing.

Perhaps a lot of things

fight their way back
to the surface when writing.

Many years later, Tolkien wrote
to his son Christopher

that his monumental work
began with scribbled notes

in army barracks,

and even in the trenches.

In late October 1916,

he described
the devastated battlefield

as miles and miles
of seething mud...

an experience that scorches
itself into the mind.

A similar scene appears
in The Lord of the Rings

with the depiction of Mordor's

no-man's-land:

The gasping pools

were choked with ash
and crawling muds,

sickly white and grey,

great cones of earth,
fire-blasted and poison-stained,

stood like an obscene graveyard

in endless rows.

A land defiled,

diseased beyond all healing.

On 15th September 1916,

the first tank in history,

the British "Mark I,"

was deployed at the Somme.

The war was becoming industrialised.

Soldiers turned into
killing machines,

numbed by the noise and chaos.

Sleepless, hungry,

with one goal drilled into them:

to kill.

We know,

at least from literature,

that the biggest shock

of World War I
was the realisation

that this was not a heroic

or chivalric struggle,

red blood on bright sand,
or the like.

I think

that sentiment is visible
even in Isengard.

In Isengard, the evil wizard

Saruman manufactures orcs,

creatures bred solely for war,

for killing.

In Peter Jackson's iconic films,

they are a manifestation
of pure evil,

drooling and ruthless.

We could say, the orcs,

to some extent,
reflect war propaganda

in which enemies, like the Germans,

were depicted as "Huns".

Dehumanised,

semi-ape-like,

bloodthirsty creatures

who ravage the conquered lands.

So, are the orcs a depiction
of the Germans,

the enemy?

Or do they represent

a generation slaughtered

at the Somme,

killing and being killed,

cannon fodder on both sides

of the front?

But within the orcs themselves,

and Tolkien was quite clear on this,

he says, you really do get glimpses,

so let's not just dismiss them

as the sort of characters that

are just really there
for cannon fodder

for people to kill, which

is what they become, unfortunately,
in Peter Jackson's films.

But in the books they, for example,

they made complaints about,
you know,

orders from on high.
They're very scared.

They sit there and say,
well, I'm not going down there.

You go down there.

"In war, we were all orcs,"

Tolkien would later write.

He transformed his experiences
into something symbolic.

If you read
the Battalion War Diaries,

you see it's a litany

of how many soldiers died

on each given day from shell fire,

from enemy attack,
poison gas, of course.

Memories of poison gas

stayed in Tolkien's mind,

fumbling to get your gas helmet on
to try to protect yourself.

And if you imagine

the already devastated landscape,

with shell craters everywhere,

tree stumps

covering the ground like skeletons,

and then everything covered
with water,

then that brings you close to the
Lord of the Rings descriptions

of the Dead Marshes.

Rain, flooded trenches,

corpses in shell craters,

the ghastly war scenery
of the Somme

is mirrored in
Middle-earth's landscapes,

such as the "Dead Marshes."

Peter Jackson
captures this hauntingly

in his film The Two Towers.

There are dead things!

Dead faces in the water!

All dead.

All rotten.
Elves and men and orcs.

A great battle long ago.

The dead marshes.

Yes, yes, that is the name.

Death makes no distinctions.

Britons, French, Germans,

all remained
in the no-man's-land

between positions.

They became part

of the earth,

as Gollum describes.

The graves were swallowed.

One notices

that in Tolkien's work

loss, death and mourning

are recurring themes.

In The Lord of the Rings,
for example, when Boromir dies,

it's crucial

for the companions to bury him.

There's a line about how

they can't leave him

among his enemies.

And I think that for someone

who witnessed

such scenes here firsthand,

it clearly influenced his work.

Tolkien and his close school friends

wanted to change the world.

They were companions on a mission,

full of hope.

They spurred each other on.

But the war changed everything.

It's unclear
whether it was intentional

or unconscious

that Tolkien's four Hobbits

come from the same region

and bond on their journey,

getting closer.

They survive it all,
in The Lord of The Rings,

and perhaps there we also see

a homage or a wish

for survival,
for these four friends,

these four young men who shared

this terrible experience.

In real life,
there are no happy endings.

His friend Geoffrey Bache Smith
died in December.

Far from the front,
he was hit by shrapnel,

a shell filled with metal bullets,

and succumbed to his injuries
on 3 December.

Rob Gilson had already been killed
on the first day of the battle.

Tolkien was deeply shaken

by the news of Rob's death.

He wrote

a very impactful phrase,
saying simply,

"Something has gone crack".

Something is broken,

irretrievably destroyed.

Can no longer be repaired,
can no longer be patched up.

Something is broken.

One has indeed personally

to come under the shadow of war

to feel fully its oppression.

By 1918,

all but one

of my close friends were dead.

As always with Tolkien,

there is another place
that could have inspired him

for the Dead Marshes.

He visited it on his trip
to Switzerland in 1911.

We're at the Grimsel Pass.

I find it interesting that
Tolkien passed through here,

crossing the Bernese Alps,

the mountain range

which inspired the Misty Mountains.

It's also interesting,
this lake behind me,

it's called the Lake of the Dead.

These are the kinds of things
that fascinated Tolkien so much.

And we see that again
in the swamps of the dead.

It has this name

about death, because a battle

took place there a long time ago.

And it was the same
with the Lake of the Dead.

During the Revolutionary Wars

of 1799,

Napoleon's general

Charles-Etienne Gudin

defeated enemy troops here,

leaving the pass strewn with bodies.

They sunk in the lake.

However, this Lake of the Dead

is very clear and blue,

unlike the marshes.
For that reason,

I'd think more

of Flanders Fields,

the no-man's-land.

What Frodo and Sam experience
in the Dead Marshes,

explained by Gollum,

stems not from one specific place

in Switzerland

or on the Western Front.

Tolkien's method

is to combine experiences,

making them applicable this way.

Tolkien's legacy is a rich,

varied world built on

certain principles.

There's a connection
between his invented ages

and us because it takes place

in a world reminiscent of ours.

He spoke of "applicability",

the freedom of readers

to interpret as they choose.

Tolkien himself escaped
the battlefield

by contracting trench fever,

a severe illness
with feverish attacks.

After six months at the front,

he returned to England to recover.

For the first time,
he spent Christmas

with his wife Edith.

In hospitals and sanatoriums

like this one in Harrogate,

Tolkien began writing

his first stories,

that would later be published

after his death as
The Book of Lost Tales,

preserved partially

in Edith's hand.

After the horror of the Somme,

Tolkien's formerly
romantic, poetic tone

became darker,

seen, for example,

in The Fall of Gondolin.

In the Fall of Gondolin,
the Elven city of Gondolin

is attacked by a force of

what Tolkien calls
monsters or dragons,

but he describes them as being

engineered creations

made of metals.

They roll over things.

They roll over barriers
and crush them.

They launch fire like flamethrowers.

Obviously like medieval dragons too.

But this is Tolkien fusing

the mythological with the modern.

"Iron dragons", driven by a chain

like the tanks
of the First World War,

attack the elven city

of Gondolin on behalf of
the villain Morgoth.

In their belly are orc warriors.

The bitter experience
of the First World War

arrived directly
in Tolkien's Middle-earth.

After the war,
Tolkien earned his living

as a scientist and lecturer.

Edith and he had four children.

A typical professor's life,

at first glance.

But after work,

he wrote several versions
of the "Silmarillion",

a legendary prequel

to his later bestselling novels.

He lived multiple lives
at the same time.

Professor by day,

writer and painter by night.

He raised his young children

and maintained his friendships.

When you think this is a man
who survived

the First World War, he showed

absolutely extraordinary resilience.

Orphaned twice before 12,
with no family reference points,

having lost his friends
during the First World War,

he built a family, a career
and a body of work.

It's quite staggering
when you think about it.

Edith, his childhood love, remained
by his side until her death.

Unlike Tolkien's mother Mabel

or his aunt Jane,

she had no academic ambitions.

You know,
when you are in a very

male-dominated Oxford,
in academia,

where

you know, the Dons have,
their... you know,

the academics have their community

and they get together and they talk
and they have

all these intellectual
sort of discussions.

And the wives are mostly at home,
not in contact with anyone else.

So there was a point where

things became strained
and difficult.

But again, these were difficulties
that they went past

and continued being together,
very happy until the end.

At times, I feel for poor Edith,
just thinking, gosh, yeah,

must have been tough.

Some aspects of Middle-earth

now seem outdated,

at first glance,

particularly the lack of women

among main characters
in the novels.

If you look at what kind
of characters they are,

a character like Luthien,

who has to save the man.

Galadriel who has done

all sorts of things,
including acts of war,

in her long life.

If you look at Eowyn,

the only character who manages

to overcome the Nazgul King,

the Witch King, to kill him.

So you can see great respect

for the opposite sex

that Tolkien brings into his work.

Tolkien honours strong women.

He even indirectly memorialises

his aunt Jane Neave,

who took him to Switzerland.

He names Bilbo Baggins'
place of residence

after her farm
in the English Midlands,

Bag End.

The professional aunt

is a fairly recent development,
perhaps.

But I was fortunate
in having an early example:

one of the first women
to take a science degree.

She is now 90,

but only a few years ago

went botanising in Switzerland.

Even before "The Hobbit",

his first bestseller,

Tolkien had already mapped out
numerous elements

of his legendarium in detail.

Over the years, the maps
became more extensive

and he kept adding new sheets

in the margins for new locations.

The end result was the largest

fantasy universe ever conceived:

Middle-earth.

Initially, he "only" wanted

to look for the mythological roots
of England.

What was before the Celts,
the Anglo-Saxons,

Arthur and the knights
of the Middle Ages?

The Nibelungenlied for Germany,
the Kalevala for Finland,

the Edda, of course,
the great stories for Iceland.

The Irish, the Welsh,
they all have stories.

But the English were a bit thin
on the ground.

But that wasn't really

a serious nationalistic background

in that sense, it was based on

the fact that he believed,

perhaps a little ambitiously,

that he could fill a gap
that no other writer

had ever been able to fill before.

The first book
in this fantasy universe

was a children's book, "The Hobbit",

in which Bilbo Baggins

defeats evil and returns home

to Hobbiton
with a ring in his pocket.

On the cover, his drawing

of Hobbiton in the Shire.

A place full of trees

and, of course, a mill -

the symbols of his happy childhood.

At first glance, Tolkien's work

seems apolitical.

Although the 1930s,
when he was writing,

were a decade of crises and wars.

Hitler came to power

in Germany in 1933.

In the Soviet Union,
Stalin and his terror reigned.

A look at Tolkien's manuscripts

from different years shows

how an iconic villain
takes on traits

of these contemporary events.

Sauron, the dark lord
of the Lord of the Rings,

he began as a rather gothic,

slightly vampiric character
in the Silmarillion.

In 1936 to 1937,

Tolkien redefines him
as the primal enemy,

the dark Lord

and a totalitarian.

But he does that just at the time

when Stalin was perpetrating

the huge Soviet purges.

And when

the danger
of totalitarianism in Europe

was becoming absolutely apparent.

It distressed him.
I think that his writing was a way

of expressing all of these things.

While The Hobbit
was a success in England,

the German licence publisher

Rütten and Loening

set a condition before publication.

Tolkien must provide
what is known as

"proof of Aryanism".

I will under no circumstances

allow you to translate it.

So he practically takes apart

the letter from Germany

in a really very sympathetic

and very sarcastic way as a linguist

and shows you that you are talking
absolute nonsense with your demands

and also tells you

that he very much regrets that,
as far as he knows,

no one in his family
is of Jewish blood,

and that he very much regrets
not having any part

of this truly gifted
and wonderful people.

Anyway, I have in this war

a burning private grudge

against that ruddy little ignoramus
Adolf Hitler.

Ruining, perverting, misapplying

and making for ever accursed,
that noble northern spirit.

The political abuse

by the Nazis repelled him.

Because he was fascinated by
the myths of northern

and north-western Europe -

as an ancient cultural asset
of Europe.

The German composer
Richard Wagner

also drew on these myths.

When asked whether he borrowed

from Wagner's opera cycle

"The Ring of the Nibelung"
for his Ring,

Tolkien counters
with his British humour:

"Both rings are round,

but that's it for the similarity".

Which is not quite true.

He knew,
Ok, I have to distance myself,

otherwise I'll be in hot water.

And that does happen to some extent.

But that element,

for example, that the ring

consumes the owner, so to speak,

that he becomes obsessed with it.

That's Wagner,

you don't have that
in the other rings.

The other rings,
they make you invisible,

they give you a lot of gold
or something.

But this element,
that it gives them power

but they give themselves up,
that's Wagnerian.

Like many in Tolkien's work,

Gollum, this schizophrenic being

possessed by the Ring,

is a very complex creation.

One that Tolkien
was particularly proud of.

Gollum was once a Hobbit
called Smeagol.

He killed his cousin Deagol

because of the Ring.

For me, Gollum is definitely

one of the best characters
in the book.

The Smeagol character who

seems almost very human.

It's desire,
it's greed over the Ring.

But that's what thwarts him.
And then you have

the Gollum character, which just

becomes so under the thrall of

of the Ring that it's just...

That competing Jekyll and Hyde,
you know,

that type of character there.

But Gollum is there
really also to display

to Frodo and to Bilbo

what might happen to them.

He's probably a Hobbit.

He should actually be like Frodo

and Sam and Merry and Pippin.

And then you see

what someone can become
in the worst case scenario.

And of course,
if you make the analogy

that every story is
always fundamentally human

and the Hobbits
are just representations

of human values or behaviour,

then of course
it's frightening to see

that we can fall so low.

We can fall so low.
We could be as terrible

as some kind of Gollum.

And that, I think, is one of those
terrifying experiences

from the First World War,
that people became monsters.

In Tolkien's mind,
something new emerges

from the true story of the rings.

There are many
possible interpretations,

including that of Gollum:

Is he, like the author,

a traumatised veteran
of the Great War?

Does this schizophrenic being
go back

to Jekyll and Hyde?

To the biblical brothers
Cain and Abel?

Or to figures
from Wagner's "Nibelungen"?

Tolkien works with

a huge amount of material.

He seems, and this also makes him

the very special author that he is,

to be able to work

with almost anything.

In Middle-earth, we find the history

of antiquity, of the Middle Ages.

But we also find

Tolkien's biography. Again and again

we find his personal attitude.

If we ask ourselves
where Middle-earth

actually comes from,
then I could almost ask back:

Where doesn't
Middle-earth come from?

The search for inspiration
for Tolkien's

one "Ring of Power"

is particularly of interest
to fans and researchers.

In 2013, a ring was on display

at The Vyne Museum in Hampshire,

which was claimed to be

the "One Ring" to attract tourists.

The ring, which is over
1500 years old,

was once discovered by a farmer
while ploughing.

According to the Latin inscription,

it belonged to
a certain "Senicianus".

The same name is discovered
during an excavation

in 1929

at an ancient temple
around 100 kilometres away

in Gloucestershire,

on a leaden plaque with a curse.

The well-known archaeologist
Mortimer Wheeler

asks Tolkien for an expert opinion
on the history of the language,

published on the excavation.

The inscription on the tablet

curses a Senicianus with illness.

"Among those who bear
the name Senicianus,

give no one good health

until he returns the ring
to the temple".

But the chain of evidence
from the ancient gold ring

to the curse tablet
to Tolkien's work

is incomplete.

The curse that was written down here

curses someone who has stolen

a ring.

On first hearing,

this does indeed sound like

"The Lord of the Rings".

But the fact that
the ring is magical

is not what is written
on this tablet.

It is simply to curse a thief

who has taken a ring.

He always used
the analogy of the soup.

There are all kinds of ingredients

which make the soup great.

The real thing is about

drinking the soup
and enjoying the soup.

It's not how much pepper in
and so on, like that.

You shouldn't really be going in
and delving into that.

The first Tolkien "soup"
tastes good to its readers.

After the global success
of The Hobbit,

his publisher wanted a sequel.

I now wanted

to try my hand...

at writing a really
stupendously long narrative

and to see whether I had sufficient

cunning or material

to make a really long narrative

which would hold
the average reader right through.

The best...
One of the best forms

for long narrative, as was found
in The Hobbit.

There's a much more
elaborate form of the

pilgrimage or journey
with an object.

So that was inevitably the form
I adopted.

An epic pilgrimage,
as he himself

experienced in Switzerland in 1911.

An item.

That sounds so simple.

Tolkien spent 15 years
writing this book,

the three-part epic

The Lord of the Rings.

This "doorstop"
is a worldwide classic today.

But because he invented wizards

and magical creatures,

dwarves, Hobbits and orcs,

its author

has long been accused
of not paying much attention

to the political present
of his lifetime.

As if a fantasy author

is not from this world.

I do believe that if

you look at his biography,
you will realise

that his entire life

was spent at war

in one form or another.

The First World War,
in which he himself served,

the Second World War, in which
two of his sons served,

the Spanish Civil War,

the Cold War. So there's always

this threat in the background.

It could be that time again,
at any moment.

While he was writing
The Lord of the Rings,

a second world war shook Europe.

Now his sons Christopher and Michael

wore the uniform of the fatherland.

Tolkien sent Christopher
the latest chapters

to review.

And to give him hope,

to comfort him.

Your accounts,
which were uncensored,

distressed but did not surprise me.

How it reminds me
of my own experience!

One war is enough
for any man.

I hope you will be spared a second.

Either the bitterness

of youth or that of middle-age
is enough

for a lifetime:

both is too much.

The world in which
Tolkien wrote the book

has become even darker.

And Middle-earth is now also

threatened by even more evil forces.

Is he referring to
his immediate present?

People do not fully understand
the difference between an allegory

and an application.
You can go to a Shakespeare play

and you can apply it to things
in your mind if you like,

but they're not allegories.

Many people applied "The Ring"

to the nuclear bomb, don't they?

They think it was in my mind,
the whole thing

was only an allegory of it.

But it isn't.

At first glance, little about
this work seems

directly political.

But at second glance,

is it not "applicable" after all?

Sauron, for example,
the new villain -

Tolkien himself later even
referred to him in a letter later as

a "Hitler with a ring".

Sauron's goal is to turn the world

into hell on Earth,

to spread Mordor.

He has no other goal.

He has no identifiable,
objective goal

other than destruction.

He is evil in itself. The devil.

Seeing him as an allusion
to Hitler, Mussolini

or Stalin doesn't work,
because these people

have a cult of personality
surrounding them.

But Sauron is not a person at all.

We never see him as a presence.

And...

he's represented by this
all seeing eye,

which seems to have control
around Mordor

without him being present.

So there's something very Orwellian

about this idea of sort of a

totalitarian regime,

which is in many ways what

the Second World War
was fighting against. Right?

The international breakthrough

for the novel
The Lord of the Rings

did not come until 1965:

with a paperback edition in the USA,

which was published quasi-illegally

due to a loophole in the licence law
for North America.

Once again, it was a time of unrest

and change,

and once again, Tolkien's book

fitted perfectly into this period.

In the 60s and 70s,

the Hobbits became important

to the hippie movement,

essentially people in search of
an alternative way of life,

an alternative society.

If you identify with the Hobbits,

you are even satisfied with
your own inadequacy,

because the Hobbits
are obviously inadequate too,

so it can't be that wrong.

In the Middle of the Earth
In the land of Shire

Lives a brave little Hobbit
Whom we all admire

A veritable Hobbit hype breaks out.

Tolkien goes pop

and even Mr Spock sings along.

It's a fantastic place to shop,

you can practically try
to live there.

So get out of Mordor,

out of the industrialised city,
into the Shire,

back to the countryside,
to the organic farm.

It's practically exemplified

in The Lord of the Rings.

So what is

this huge work?

Sure, the greatest
fantasy adventure of all time.

But it is also an artistically
alienated image

of our world.

Tolkien created it

from his own experiences
and those of mankind.

From sagas and legends,

his childhood in central England

and his experiences in the trenches

on the Somme.

In the course of his life,

Tolkien learnt

that war and peace
come and go,

almost like the seasons.

Nothing is permanent,

nothing is guaranteed.

What can be said is that
every age of Middle-earth

ends with a war

and that this is a caesura

and that a new age then begins,

first in relative peace,

only to end with war again.

We must always rejoice,

be grateful, but also

work ourselves to ensure
that this does not happen again.

That's what the comrades do
in The Lord of the Rings.

Put themselves out there.

They embark on a dangerous
journey into the unknown,

just as Tolkien experienced
in Switzerland.

They are the only hope
for Middle-earth.

And somehow,

they are also
a reflection of humanity.

Their goal is
to destroy the One Ring,

to destroy evil.

How do you do that?

With will. With values.

With friends.

In Peter Jackson's film
The Two Towers,

the Hobbit Samwise Gamgee
embodies these values:

What are we holding on to, Sam?

There is some good in this world,
Mr Frodo,

and it's worth fighting for.

He brought the Hobbits

into the story
as a stroke of genius.

The real heroes are the little ones.

I think that is something that
the sixty-eighters

became very aware of.
We have to stand up

against the big ones up there,

against the bigwigs, the big-heads.

And the little man,
the little woman,

we can all make a difference.

Tolkien wrote books
full of symbolic wisdom

that have always held true

and have since captivated

hundreds of millions of readers.

Respect nature.

Stick together.
Believe in yourselves.

Do not despair.

The reader is free to apply

the book to their own experience

or to history, as they wish.

Tolkien's books combine history

and values
that everyone can connect to.

I was maybe 10 years old

when I read The Hobbit
for the first time.

I grew up in Puerto Rico,

a world away from this.

In the tropics, speaking Spanish.

But when I read The Hobbit,

there are things about it,
there are hints

and fragments of a deeper world,

of a longer history that Tolkien

spreads into these stories.

He teaches us as we read,

to appreciate these things

about our environment
and about our landscape

that are ancient, that go beyond us
and will outlast us.

After The Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien begins a sequel

that is not supposed
to have a happy ending.

The dystopia The New Shadow

from the Fourth Age of Middle-earth.

He finished it
after just a few pages.

If I recall correctly,

he abandoned it basically
because he felt it

was too dark
and he was going into a dark place.

It kind of

undermined his whole...

his whole theory that good
will eventually

conquer evil, coming from
his Christian beliefs.

By the end of his life,

his Middle-earth epic
was a global success.

And Tolkien himself lived more
and more in the world

he had created.

When Edith died in 1971

at the age of 82,

he has "Luthien" written
on her gravestone -

a character from his posthumously
published book

Beren and Luthien.

A great love story
between a mortal

and an Elf.

When he died two years later
in 1973,

the name of the mortal

was found under his own name:

"Beren".

Tolkien did not continue the story

of the Fourth Age, the Age of Men,

as he also called it.

What we do know: Middle-earth

has the shape of a sphere

and corresponds in many ways

to our world today.

His books for adults,

especially The Lord of the Rings
and The Silmarillion,

have a very melancholic,
even pessimistic undertone

regarding the history of mankind.

The way he portrays humanity

is like a warning
about the threats of his time

and is frighteningly
topical again today.

Time and again,
"evil rulers" start wars

and thus seem to confirm
Tolkien's terrifying vision

of a "Fourth Age".

Did he become
a pessimist in the end?

A key scene
in Peter Jackson's film

The Fellowship of the Ring
provides the answer:

I wish the Ring
had never come to me.

I wish none of this had happened.

So do all
who live to see such times.

But that is not for them to decide.

All we have to decide,
is what to do

with the time that is given to us.

A look at the true history
of the rings shows

that not only evil,

but also good,
repeats itself cyclically

in human history.

That there are always "companions"

who destroy evil.

If that's not a message...

Subtitles by Alison Watt