Christopher Tolkien's twelve volume History of Middle-earth series is a very important source for charting the develpement of Tolkien's legendarium from its genesis in 1915 to his final works in the 1960-70's. This group's objective is to read one chapter of HOME a week starting with the early versions of the Legendarium in The Book of Lost Tales and discuss the the themes and narrative content of that chapter and how it links to the overall development of the legendarium. All are welcome to participate and explore!

The chair is named after a group of 20th-century thinkers and writers at Oxford University who became known as The Inklings, which we all know members included among others C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson.

"The example set by the members of the Inklings constitutes a high ideal of intellectual and spiritual maturity, which serves as a goal for our efforts as teachers and scholars," Rozema said. "I consider myself a student of these men."

Read the full news article here.

Very few facts were known about the player – only that he hailed from Sweden and that he was a very, very gifted poker player. Since Isildur1 started playing highroller poker games against some of the world’s greatest players, rumors began to circulate that he was none other than the reclusive Swedish wunderkind, Viktor Blom. This week Viktor Blom finally decided to come out as Isildur1, making an end to the mystery.

Still Viktor Blom remains very modest, while owning a bankaccount all of us would be jealous of, he remains a big Tolkien fan as well. I remember him saying during an online poker game:

Isildur1: lol Isildur1: i might fold Isildur1: confirmed i didnt want to destroy the ring Isildur1: isilduuuuuur Isildur1: ring has power today