Lord of the rings. (Letters).

SIR: Like Paul Tankard (May 2002), I first read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a schoolboy and have re-read it quite a few times since. The most recent occasion was when, a few years ago, I read it to two of my young nephews. I think his reflections on the Peter Jackson film compared with the book do justice to both, but I would like to correct two minor errors and add a brief comment.

The errors are spelling the name of the High Elf Glorfindel "Glorfindal" and rather more significantly, calling him Arwen's brother. He is not Arwen's brother at all. Her brothers are Elrohir and Elladan, who, like Glorfindel, have also been left out of the Peter Jackson film. I am puzzled that Dr Tankard, as someone who says he has read The Lord of the Rings half a dozen times and was a founder of The Fellowship of Middle Earth at Monash University, could make such an error of detail in such a context.

My comment is that I think Dr Tankard misses what I regard as the single greatest virtue of The Lord of the Rings. He rightly remarks that "The sense of the past, of historical layers, is a vital element of the book, giving it a quasi-mythic depth beyond the scope of most fiction." What he doesn't then do is pause to reflect on how useful this can be at a time when it has become difficult to teach traditional history, old myths and religious doctrines, because globalisation is putting all ...