XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.obituaries, a;t/books   
   XPost: rec.arts.books   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   JRR Tolkien's son Christopher dies aged 95   
      
   Youngest son of Lord of the Rings author was responsible for editing   
   and publishing much of his father’s work   
      
   Nicola Slawson   
      
   Thu 16 Jan 2020 19.14 GMT   
   First published on Thu 16 Jan 2020 18.54 GMT   
      
   Christopher Tolkien drew many of the maps detailing the world of   
   Middle Earth that feature in the original Lord of the Rings books.   
   Photograph: Tolkien Society   
      
   Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien,   
   has died aged 95, the Tolkien Society has announced. The society,   
   which promotes the life and works of the celebrated writer, released a   
   short statement on Twitter to confirm the news.   
      
   The statement said: “Christopher Tolkien has died at the age of 95.   
   The Tolkien Society sends its deepest condolences to Baillie, Simon,   
   Adam, Rachel and the whole Tolkien family.”   
      
   Tolkien, who was born in Leeds in 1924, was the third and youngest son   
   of the revered fantasy author and his wife Edith. He grew up listening   
   to his father’s tales of Bilbo Baggins, which later became the   
   children’s fantasy novel, The Hobbit.   
      
   He drew many of the original maps detailing the world of Middle-earth   
   for his father’s The Lord of the Rings when the series was first   
   published between 1954 and 55. He also edited much of his father’s   
   posthumously published work following his death in 1973. Since 1975 he   
   had lived in France with Baillie.   
      
   Tolkien Society chairman Shaun Gunner praised Christopher’s commitment   
   to his father’s work and said: “Millions of people around the world   
   will be forever grateful to him … We have lost a titan and he will be   
   sorely missed.”   
      
   Charlie Redmayne, chief executive of HarperCollins UK, which publishes   
   much of JRR Tolkien’s work, said: “Christopher was a devoted curator   
   of his father’s work and the timeless and ongoing popularity of the   
   world that JRR Tolkien created is a fitting testimony to the decades   
   he spent bringing Middle-Earth to generations of readers.   
      
   “[He was] the most charming of men, and a true gentleman. It was an   
   honour and privilege to know and work with him and our thoughts are   
   with his family at this time.”   
      
   Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi hailed Christopher for enriching his   
   father’s work. She said: “He gave us a window into Tolkien’s creative   
   process, and he provided scholarly commentary that enriched our   
   understanding of Middle-earth. He was Middle-earth’s cartographer and   
   first scholar.”   
      
   In an interview with the Guardian in 2012, Christopher’s son Simon   
   described the enormity of the task after his grandfather died with so   
   much material still unpublished.   
      
   Simon said: “He had produced this huge output that covered everything   
   from the history of the gods to the history of the people he called   
   the Silmarils – that was his great work, but it had never seen the   
   light of day despite his best efforts to get it published.”   
      
   His son was left to sift through the files and notebooks, and over the   
   two decades after his father’s death, he published The Silmarillion,   
   Unfinished Tales, Beren And Lúthien and The History of Middle-earth,   
   which fleshed out the complex world of elves and dwarves created by   
   his father.   
      
   “It’s enormously to my father’s credit that he took on that huge task.   
   I remember the crateloads of papers arriving at his home, and no one   
   could be in any doubt at the scale of the work he had taken on,” Simon   
   said.   
      
   Although he worked tirelessly to protect his father’s legacy, he was   
   not impressed by what he saw as the commercialisation of his work. He   
   was famously critical of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning film adaptation   
   of The Lord of the Rings. In a 2012 interview with the French   
   newspaper Le Monde, he said: “They gutted the book, making an action   
   film for 15-to-25-year-olds.”   
      
   He also said: “Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own   
   popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time,” and that “the   
   commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact   
   of the creation to nothing”.   
      
   Source: https://t.co/fHLBGM8GM9?amp=1   
   --   
   Stephen Hayes, Author of The Year of the Dragon   
   Sample or purchase The Year of the Dragon:   
   https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/907935   
   Web site: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com   
   E-mail: shayes@dunelm.org.uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)