The Bluebottle Boys – Chapter 4, Part 1 – Edgbaston, Summer 1961: School Is Out [Note: The featured pic is a triptic of places Reggie and Stan visit over the summer. Left to right (1) Perrot’s Folly and the Edgbaston Waterworks Tower (inspirations for Tolkien’s “Two Towers”); (2) Sarehole Mill (inspiration for Tolkien’s The Shire […]
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The Bluebottle Boys -Chapter 3, Part 1 — Edgbaston & Birmingham, Spring 1961: Winter Into Spring [Note: You alumnae of the Walking Backwards for Christmas posts will recognise the featured picture. For you newcomers, this is the castle-like toposcope (or at least the current version of it) standing at the top of Beacon Hill, south […]
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Walking Backwards for Christmas: A Tale of Woe from Soggyhall, Chapter 2, Edgbaston, September 1960, “Beacon Hill and Bad Omens” [Note: The featured picture is of the toposcope at the top of Beacon Hill] Now and then, we’d take a bus away from town, to Beacon Hill and the castle-like toposcope at its crest. It […]
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Tolkien’s Birmingham: Lickey Hills, Minas Tirith, the Spired City — and Arwen Every summer, Fr Francis took the Tolkien brothers on holiday to Lyme Regis in Devon. Here he had several friends and Ronald was fascinated by the striking landscape. It was on one such holiday that Fr Francis discovered the true feelings of the […]
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