Tolkien on the BBC this weekend

So, thanks to Andrew F, Allan G, and Janice S. for sharing the news that there's a special Tolkien broadcast on the BBC this weekend.

It's long been known that when the BBC interviewed Tolkien for the 1968 BBC-tv special TOLKIEN IN OXFORD, the film crew shot a lot more footage than made it into the final film. For years Tolkien scholars have speculated whether any of the unused footage may survive. The answer turns out to be yes: thanks to Stuart Lee (editor of the Blackwell-Wiley volume on JRRT) the recovered footage has resurfaced (parts of it were shown to the Tolkien Society last year)* and excerpts from it are going to be broadcast on radio-BBC tomorrow. Here's a link to the article about the broadcast:

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2016/07/bbc-to-broadcast-lost-tolkien-recordings/

And here's the listing actual broadcast, through which I hope to be able to listen to it tomorrow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mvd5z


Nice to see that Joss Ackland will be the host; previously I've known him mainly as the guy who played C. S. Lewis in the original SHADOWLANDS (and did a much better job of it than Hopkins in the theatrical version).  And that they have a good array of Tolkien talent to comment on the clips (Dimitra Fimi, Stuart Lee, Tom Shippey).**  V. much looking forward to this one.

--John R.


*http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2015/07/watch-leslie-megahey-talks-about-tolkien-in-oxford/

**pity they didn't include longtime Tolkien Society stalwart Jessica Yates, who's actually in the original 1968 broadcast film.