![]() The author’s descriptions of these landscapes are comprehensive and consistent, though unlabored-once conjured, the mountains are kept aloft by the lightest of touches-and some places are so beautifully evoked that they may stay with you for a lifetime. Illustration © Alan Lee for The Folio Society’s edition of J.R.R. For me though, it was the landscapes of Middle-earth that most captured my interest and lingered long after the quest was fulfilled and the epic concluded. Seven years after their first publication, the books were becoming a cultural phenomenon the combination of playfulness, poetry and romance and an existential struggle to save the world seemed to align with the spirit of the times, while the characters-now recruited into the counter-culture-lived far beyond the confines of the text. For a few months the Hillingdon suburbs were transformed into the marshes, fells and woodlands of Middle-earth and my friendships were upgraded into fellowships. ![]() I first read The Lord of the Rings in 1964, when I was seventeen and working in a cemetery during a hiatus in my art school education. ![]()
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