"The Fall of Númenor" Interview with editor Brian Sibley

welcome everyone to nerd of the Rings we have a very special guest that we are welcoming back to the channel today Mr Brian Sibley who uh as of today um has a new book out the fall of numenor Brian thank you so much for joining us today oh it's great to be with you again Matt great to see you so uh we're very excited for fall of numenor um especially those like me who uh love diving into tolkien's works and in order to look at the second age we have to look at a number of books previously we've had to look at a number of books and kind of go scatter shot throughout tolkien's entire Library so tell us about the Fallen numenor for those who aren't familiar with what this book is yeah certainly well it's all now in one book and I'll show it to you here I'm picking up a pile of papers while I do that but and incidentally thanks for talking to me so early Matt it's uh I know it's early in the morning your time it's not quite so early in the morning here but this is my uh I'm having my second breakfast cup of tea so very nice yeah so the book looks like this now and it's uh all in one volume and what is in that volume well basically as you say Tolkien wrote a lot of things in his in his life about human or I think in a way uh somebody described new the second age of Middle Earth as being a kind of bridge between the things that Tolkien have written about in the silmarillion uh which are kind of like before the first stage and then the first stage with this great story is about Baron and luthien and so on and this was his kind of way of trying to work out how to link that great matter of Middle Earth that he'd written about in in the silmarillion with uh the third age which he'd written about in The Hobbit and most prominently in The Lord of the Rings and and so he started trying to join up these pieces of writing you know and this is very much the way as we all know that that Tolkien worked if it was a map he'd be adding bits on and moving things around and similarly with the text he wanted to have a kind of a a sense of creating an entire well what we now call a legendarium but which in his time he would he would readily talked about as being a kind of modern myth a myth for well he talked about it as a myth for England but you know it was something which he saw as having an entire continuity to it so these writings of course none of us really knew about uh when he was alive right in point of fact I'm I'm old enough of course to have seen the first publication of the silmarillion in a later unfinished titles and those books were edited by his son Christopher were a revelation because we suddenly discovered that there was this massive material which some of which had been hinted at in The Lord of the Rings but suddenly we were reading what he wanted to tell us about those early days for the first time so it was a revelation I remember a lot of people being terribly disappointed with the silver earlier when it came out Matt because you know what they basically wanted was another Lord of the Rings and they hadn't got it they'd got these sort of uh biblical stories about the creation and the founding of the universe and that kind of thing followed by this long history about the The Elves and the the adventures to do with the silver rules and and heroes like Baron and his love for Lucy and so on but of course we'd heard of some of these things because we'd heard of Baron and luthien in The Lord of the Rings when Aragorn talks about them when he's talking to the hobbits so we knew that there was all this stuff but we didn't know the matter of it well you know what it felt like so I remember feeling the silver and it was really really exciting uh it was exciting because it suddenly was fleshing out things to do with what I've read in The Lord of the Rings which I hadn't known including perhaps most importantly uh not the fall of numenor actually because that was something I hadn't at that point I don't think I had the same I had got the same point of interest in but certainly for me as a young guy reading it was the thing about how the rings of power came to be forged you know the backstory to that which again there's hints of it in the Council of elrond for example where elrond talks about those things that Gandalf himself of course has given a warning to both Bilbo and Frodo about the importance of the ring and it's explained to Frodo in bhagen just how powerful the one ring that Gollum had found and that Bilbo had then Acquired and passed on some Frodo just how powerful that ring was so we knew those things were there but suddenly they were fleshed out so I found that that passage of of rings and of the Rings of power very very uh evocative and and exciting but the book also contained the silmarine also contained the achillebeth and that was an account of the fall of this romantic five star Five Point star-shaped Island which had been given to men because of their loyalty in fighting with alongside the elves against uh morgoth and his overthrow so that was you know tantalizing and it obviously had links to Atlantis because it was about an island that eventually is destroyed by well consumed by the Sea it's actually turned over and and sunk just like Atlantis in a way but for different reasons and that history of the people of numenor and how they interact with the the people of Middle Earth and of course how as a result of what happened there and the relationship between those two places how the Rings came to be forged and how the Rings came to find themselves in Middle Earth so all of that uh matter of the legend as it were became you know unwracked for us and of course as you know Matt in 12 volumes uh Christopher Tolkien went on to open more and more doors into his into his father's writing but as you say all the stuff to do with Newman in fact all the stuff to do with the second age is really scattered uh through well I think it's I think it's well it's obviously a few primary books because you've got the silver alien and unfinished Tales but then several of the volumes of the history of Middle Earth yeah uh Sauron defeated the peoples of Middle Earth they contain elements of that that story as well all Christopher's notes about it or Corrections and amendments so those the idea was to bring as much as that matter together about the second age and put it in a single book and always I have to say because it's quite important that that I say this although there's no new material of of found by Christopher or uncovered this is all material which is already there yeah but always it's accompanied by notes which tell you if you really want to know more about this you can go to this volume and you can find out more and there's uh extra things you might like to read in this volume so there's lots of notes but they're all at the back so if you don't want to read it you don't have to but if you so if you just want to follow the story chronologically of the second age you can do that or you can dive in and find more stuff and follow it up yeah and I I did see a uh a sneak peek that was released and I I noticed your footnotes were very thorough and I was very uh excited to see that that if there's anything you could possibly want to dive deeper on you've got a footnote directing you to where to go yeah well I I hope that I hope that is the case I'm sure I'm sure that the Tolkien aficionados will find things and say well he didn't link to that did he and there is a comment about that I think one of the hard things in putting the book together really Matt has been the fact that you know talking as we know on everything that he wrote he constantly updated it amended it changed it tweaked it sometimes just adding notes in the margin and Christopher of course spent most of his uh life after his father's death unraveling those Mysteries and giving them to us in the most coherent way that he could um but there are of course variations on some of these stories and some of them appear in in different volumes in slightly different versions so there were times when I had to decide which is the the version which reads best for the needs of this book um and sometimes I've collaborated or Bronte brought together things from totally different sources so for example the feeling of pneumonor as an island is something which Toki spent a lot of time writing about what it looked like it's uh its landscape its nature uh the the lives of the people the cities their pastimes and sports they're um worship and spiritual beliefs you know all of those kind of things their child how they raise their children how often their children he went into enormous detail about it all but in lots of different places and there is a section called a description of numenor which will be well known to readers of tolkien's um the first books that Christopher published but the recently there was a book by Carl Hostetter which is called the nature of Middle Earth and he he'd introduced some new material about numerals so all that has been drawn in as well so it's just it's I can't say that it is the most comprehensive version that can ever be printed because I'm sure people will find things and what the book doesn't do it doesn't give you all the permutations so you can't go to the book and say well that's the first version this is what the second one looks like because what I wanted to do most of all because I'm a Storyteller man I'm not really an academic and what I wanted to do was to be able to give people a feeling of the story of the second age as best as I could using tolkien's own words not my own yeah um and and try and convey that and when I was looking for a framework I thought how am I going to do this and I thought well in the appendices to the Lord of the Rings there's a section called The Tale of years and Tolkien sets out his own chronology in great detail of the third age which is the Lord of the Rings period down to date specific about where Frodo and Sam and Gollum are at a certain date and where Aragorn is and so on but it for the second age he does have a page and a half of of dates and the the reign of the king of or queen of the time various things that happened like boats leaving to go to Middle Earth that kind of thing so I thought that's going to be my framework the skeleton if you like on which one all of the bits and pieces uh so that when you're reading it you can actually as far as possible re everything Tolkien wrote about the second age in the order of the years uh of its you know the of its timeline really so that's that's how it's being constructed now I'm I'm curious you know because the the process that you went through I imagine kind of mirrors that of Christopher's when he was writing something like the silmarillion did did this give you a new appreciation for Christopher's work in a way oh absolutely I mean I don't think I'd ever doubted Christopher right yeah abilities but it's certainly uh and and indeed you're right but of course I didn't have to do one thing that Christopher had to do which was to transcribe all his father's manuscripts right yeah reading that handwriting is versions of them so I had it easy actually but but yes you're right I mean I had all that I went through it all of the volumes and looked for everything that I might be able to find there and then made decisions about what was going to go in and what could or couldn't go in and what was you know possible but maybe wasn't right to go in uh and pages and pages of notes and I because I hate marking books I never mark any of my books I never turn over the corner of a page or yeah you know even pencil marks on a book I'm reluctant to ever do so what I did was I thought I never had a video I just bought a complete set of as they stand now all the books paperbacks and then I thought now these are just new editions I've they're they're empty up three prints they're nothing particular and I can just treat them like they are Source materials so I can Mark Pages stick stickers in it you know cross passages output references to other books and other Pages which is what I did so I had this heap of books that I was constantly going around with I kept I kept getting confused between because the material as you point out is in lots of different volumes yeah like I'm getting confused about where material was even though I was working with it I kept picking up the Silver Hill instead of Unfinished tiles and things like that I've finished like this in the other book um yeah it was but it was a testimony as you right say to just how this great puzzle of tolkien's writings had been uh the solution the the resolution of the maze had been worked out by Christopher before me and uh yeah without Christopher I mean without Christopher's work this book wouldn't have happened obviously because it you know so so the book is very much um indebted to Christopher and Christopher I'm quite quite clear about honoring Christopher in my introduction and indeed Christopher's name as editor of all those other books appears alongside mine on the title page which is very important to me so but of course what we haven't touched on which I'm sure you're going to ask me is are there any pictures in the book there are indeed yes we we're very excited I love love the cover and we've gotten I saw on your Facebook we saw uh a little sneak peek of one that Alan Lee did of um the faithful uh some of the faithful being led to be sacrificed in the temple of melkor on numero which is incredible but the the cover in particular um that you showed a little bit ago is is just amazing um it looks like because all the old copies of the book uh have this printed eventually on the right page yet have it as a the front end paper of the book and it is I think an extraordinary piece of work by Alan uh and I don't know I think it's probably now on the net but if you look at when you get a chance to look at it close I don't think I can actually show you in the uh by holding it up here but on this at this point of the the uh collapse here of of our many loss uh you can if you look carefully you can see sauron's standing on one of the uh the tops of the falling buildings so uh yeah it's a beautiful piece of work uh I think one of his most as hard as with Ireland's work is all his work is so magnificent oh absolutely I think I think with uh in a way it's some of the most dramatic work of his I've ever seen and you mentioned the the one of the the faithful being led to the Temple of morgoth to be slain it's sacrifice on the numenor and the I think all the illustrations in the book more or less are pictures which Alan really wanted to make because he'd never had the opportunity to make them before yeah yeah and uh I mean you should really talk to Alan about his work on this I'm sure you will because his work is uh fantastic I mean there are 10 plates in the book that's the cover which is also the front end paper and then there's upward of 50 plus pencil drawings through the book yeah uh of the pieces of landscape of uh key figures in the story incidents just just uh amazing pencil sketches as well so it's a it's a very illustration heavy book um but I love that factor and Alan worked on it so passionately I think because you know for him as I say it was an excitement of being able to tackle scenes he hadn't done before yeah you know I I was very I was very pleasantly you you mentioned the 50 plus um pencil sketches which was something that I don't think was mentioned in the uh the initial release so so I was just expecting the the color images and so when I saw the the preview and I saw all these pencil sketches I was like oh my gosh this is amazing I love this like well there's more than I thought there would be yeah well I don't think Alan has a capacity for constantly he's not one he's not an artist like like well let's say anybody else because it's not true necessarily but some artists would probably say I was commissioned to do X number of pictures that's that's what I've done I've done it the job's done but Alan just kept I think because he was excited by the text he's just kept drawing a drawing and and he did some of the some of the some of the drawings were done only a matter of a day or two before everything went off to the the Press he just kept saying I've got some more I've got another drawing I want to put in there there's like so he he really got excited by it I mean it hasn't been revealed yet and uh or prior to the book coming out so I'm not going to reveal it because I know it's something that people will want to see for the first time I open the book but there is a and I alluded to it actually long ago as as June when when the the Press announcement came out but um one of the pictures I'm most excited by um is the fact that Alan wanted to do a picture of new Earth a picture of Casa Doom uh in Moria uh at the height of his of its great appear you know when it was at its most wonderful it was most brilliant and he never had a chance to do that because always the pictures were of in The Lord of the Rings are yeah uh kazadum after it's disappointment by the Orcs And The balrog and so on so he got he got the this he wanted to do that and and the perfect moment for that it's just a one line that appears in one of the one of the manuscripts which talks about how Galadriel and this is at the point of course when the Elves and the doors were working together yeah Galadriel passed through kazadoo uh into the the east side of Middle Earth you know on her way to La Florian yeah uh Kelly born would not accompany her because he wouldn't go through not not through hostility but just a slight distrust of the dwarfs but I think also he he didn't like the idea of being underground so he we don't know how kellyborne got to the other side other than he had to go down to what later became the gap of Rohan and go at the end different mountains and then up the other side northwards or he had to go as the fellowship tried to do over the mountains and come down the other side but we do know that Galadriel went through and there is this stunning illustration by Alan of cousin Doom in all its Glory I mean it looks fantastic uh with Galadriel on a horse accompanied by the elves meeting the dwars as they pass through the the mind of the minds of kazaduma and it you know those are the kind of illustrations that excite me but the one you mentioned particularly uh I find really interesting uh and there's another one of the uh building of varadur during the process of Sauron creating baradura in in Mordor the illustrations that most beguile me are these ones where Alan hints at the size and the bulk of the architectural yeah Elements by only showing you a very small piece of it you know the illustration you're referring to yes there's a great staircase at which the the doomed faithful are making their way and there's quite evidence of uh some kind of a sacrificial area and there are bowls of fire and uh there's appear to be sort of runways over gullies through which presumably the blood of the sacrifice sacrifices uh runs away but although there's you know certain elements are very clear and precise you don't unders you the only way you understand the size of this building is in relation to what you can see of the of the landscape in the background and you realize just how big this building is even though you're only seeing you know a section of it it's amazing way of being able to convey the the height and the and the bulk of a building by only showing you an element of it and making that element in relation to the landscape there's so much about Alan's pictures which are just just magical and stunning and beautiful of course so I think that's probably what I made and I keep saying to people sometimes people say to me so what's new in this book you know what's new is there anything you're talking in there uh and I go well if you don't like the the text what you haven't got is over 70 illustrations paintings and drawings by um Alan Lee and that's got to be worth buying you know you can forget all the text pages yeah well we certainly won't sell the text short but yeah the pictures are very exciting I the the subject of the size of the Temple of melkor actually came up uh on one of my live streams the other day as we were talking about the book and looking at that new image and you're totally right we we were in awe of the scale of the Temple of melkor and you're totally right he he does a masterful job of not needing to show you the entire building to give you that sense of scale you see the people on there and you know it just kind of goes off the frame it's so massive it can't even fit on the frame you know exactly and if you saw it as as a in its in its full image as it were then you wouldn't see the people that are on the respectable or whatever so uh it by actually as you say giving it that human scale makes you realize just the vastness of it so it's a brilliant uh um it's a brilliant device uh he there's also as I said there's the creation of barodua which has a similar effect uh and of course because Alan is very aware of how he places drawings because it's placed uh on the right hand page of the spread so the building as it were lies in the gutter of the book so you you you rig if it was the other way around you it wouldn't feel quite the same it's because we we know we're just seeing this edge of a building which you know um is is lost to us but we can immediately see how huge and enormous it is yeah now um I'm curious with working with Alan um is there any conversation like was there any conversations between the two of you about you know what moments would be great illustrations or is Alan Lee one of those where you just say hey Alan uh illustrate this book for us and then you just let him go well we did let him go obviously just a combination there but it was a combination early on we had a an early call on the project and by which time I'd more or less assembled the text and we had a conversation about what things would you know could work and and might be there and and so the conversation about Casa Doom early on that Alan said to me I really want to paint kazadum uh as it would have looked at the height of its Splendor uh and then you know we found this particular opportunity which also brought Galadriel into uh the the image as well which of course has got its own you know it's a different resonance but also is something that he hadn't drawn the idea of galadril in association with the dwarves so uh that that came out of that discussion building came out of that discussion we talked about the fact that one of the pictures we wanted to to show was a feeling of the people of Newman are looking towards the west and there is a painting which reflects that of people looking Westward uh from um the the uh the port on numenor so that they've you know there's a sense of the Horizon Beyond um and lots of other things like I said to Alan can we please have some dancing bears yeah they're quite small but there are dancing bears in there uh and we talked about foliage and flowers and birds and things that could be could provide little vignettes so yeah there was quite a lot of conversation and Alan I I well what I learned from working with Alan on this I've known Allen for 50 years is but we've never worked on a project in any way together and the one thing I realized was just how thorough he is in in going through a manuscript and finding matter within it that that triggers ideas for him and uh that that I found I mean he would say he said to me at one point oh I've had this idea for a drawing I won't spoil it because it will give things away but um I I he said I had you know an idea for for this and he had just he knew my text so well in my text I'm saying I mean my assemble text he knew it so well that he was able to pinpoint you know elements that would be just capture a mood or a moment um and obviously there are very dramatic moments like Sauron um uh giving in to uh farazon surrendering yeah you know kneeling before him of course he's kneeling before him because he's got a a plan that of what's going to happen when he goes to Newman or he's he wasn't really surrendering but in his false guys he appeared to be uh um giving up yeah and uh that that's very clear what that what that moment is but there are other moments where there's just a sense of maybe it's a Seascape or um a piece of landscape or the just things which just enhance and embellish the story um and then things that he's picked up from from tolkien's writing so working with somebody who was so indebted to the text and working through it and looking for things and was excited by it I mean the great thing about Alan is his is his quiet excitement you know he doesn't get uh he doesn't wave his arms around and his voice doesn't get in a higher the excited like mine does but um there's this genuine absolute kind of Devotion to what he's doing and he steeped in Tolkien I mean he's you know he's been there for so long I mean I've gone out you know they've they've lived with this this um legendarium for so long that yeah I think there's hardly anything you could say to either of them but in this case to Alan uh where he wouldn't instantly know how he was going to depict it you know the shape of a ship or uh the look of somebody's headdress or a helmet or that those kind of things you know so uh yeah it was it was it was um very very much a collaborative thing at the beginning and all the time you know Alan would show me the pictures as he was doing them so I could see you know how it's developing we used to have zoom calls with my editor Chris Smith and Alan and uh Chris always thought it was I think it's probably right as an editor you never push the artist to you know show you what you're working on but yeah Chris Chris knew that every time we call together at some point in the call I would Zoom call I would say so how the pictures Alan and uh and then he'd lean across him you know pick something up I've just done this what do you think so uh that was thrilling because I've never had that opportunity I've worked with other artists other illustrators but I've never worked with somebody where the the uh the process of uh creation was something which I you know saw unfold in so you know Alan Alan Lee buy the book for Alan's pictures if you don't mind the texture that's okay as well I'm sure they're both phenomenal and go very well together um so I wanted to back up a little bit here and and ask how did the idea for this book come about yeah well Hopper Collins had been thinking for some time that this was an area a subject that really ought to be brought into one book you know they've been looking at as you know the great Tales have been published in in ways where the text was it was brought together um but newmanor was obviously quite a was much more tricky because it was dissipated amongst so many different volumes and it had a very particular need that or or approach to how you would put it together so it had been on their mind for a long time uh I'm uh obviously everybody was aware that Amazon Prime were going to be launching the rings of power and so there was going to be for the first time for many many viewers of anything to do on film with Tolkien and awareness of the fact that these things went on years before the Lord of the Rings right so I you know clearly there was if you like a potential Market of readers who would not know necessarily anything about the the second age um of course what none of us were aware of because the rings of power had hadn't landed at that point I suppose none of us were at that point were aware of just where they were going to enter into the second age as filmmakers you know that they were actually not going to apart from a sort of prologue material that they weren't all flashbacks they weren't actually going to go into the matter of of the second age until you get to Year 3000 and whatever it is or thereabouts uh when our pharah songs on this on the scene you know we're talking about actually the last days of human or really it could have been one of those days of human or like The Last Days of Pompeii but um uh so but that was obviously that was in everybody's minds but the book as a concept of being talked about for a long time and when uh harperconomics came to me and said would I be interested in tackling this and know they came to me not as somebody who was and I'm not being sort of overly modest about this but I knew that they didn't hadn't come to me as somebody who was somebody who was a scholar who was having to unearth and analyze new material that I would be coming to it as a Storyteller yeah somebody who For Whom the the story is the prime thing because as you know I've I did a radio version and I've written about Jackson's film versions and yeah maps and I've always written about those things in terms of the story which is at the heart of it so for me it was an invitation to try I I daunting one I have to say I mean when I look at the book now uh I do think oh gosh did I have any qualms about this and and if I'm honest yes I did at the beginning because I thought well the bulk of the material well it seemed like the bulk of the material it didn't turn out to be the case but the bulk of the material is already there in the summer and unfinished tales with a lot of other stuff aside and how will this all hold together and what do I do for example when we come to the story of um aldari and errandis because for for there's an example where it's a long narrative it's a huge chunk of uh of of one of the original Publications uh but of course it was incomplete and Christopher had to pull together the strands that he found to finish the story and of course it spans a number of years in this chronology so this that that text is there in its entirety but it's interrupted by other events chronologically as they as they come up so you know it's a different way of reading the book and the matter I suppose um but the moment I the moment I well I went back to Harper College and said to me the only logical way to deal with this is the tale of years to chronology and that if we stick with that chronology then we know that that's obviously it's not the it's not the last word because there's all kinds of things that are wrong with that chronology and the conflict sometimes between that chronology and the line of elros documents so but by and large as long as we tell people where there's a different a difference or you know there's a date which has got changed and therefore there's a an uncertainty as long as we mention all those things we can hold everything together by that chronology and of course it goes from the founding of of numero or right the way through to the fall of Sarah the overthrow of Sauron uh and The Taking of the ring and then you're straying into the third era of the third age of course with yeah the death of um but uh you know the the age is complete in that in that sense and what I haven't said is of course I've also introduced into the book that again this is one of the things I said I wanted to do when I accepted it I said I really think it needs this and the estate and harbor Collins accepted that and went with it was that I wanted to bring in material with which readers would be familiar already I mean I'm talking about matter from The Lord of the Rings is anything in there from The Hobbit there are obviously references to The Hobbit but but there are lots of references to the second age in The Lord of the Rings I mean I've mentioned a couple already you know Gander I'm talking about the forging of the one rings for example uh and and another example would be at the Council of elrond where elrond himself talks about having been uh the the standard Bearer yeah the last alliance between um elves and Men uh and how he witnessed uh isildura taking the ring from sauron's hand and how he counseled um isildura at the time to destroy the ring and how he didn't so that you know those things are in the Council of elrond right but other things like for example also at the Council of elrond where uh glowing the dwarf talks about Doom at its height of majesty yeah well he reads he he recites a a verse in fact yeah ballad really I think he sings it um and and that's included or for example the the comments which Legolas talks about uh to the to the fellowship as they're approaching lothlorian when he's talking about uh uh about that place um so those things are now woven in they're quite clear it's quite clear where they've come from you know obviously it's it's introduced as being this is how it said or the finding of on Mount Linda Lewin of the of the spring yeah the seedling of the white tree uh you know just on the eve of of Aragorn's coronation so those elements are woven into the story at the appropriate moment it's like flash forwards of flash backwards um and another example I would say which is worth noting is the fact that in in the second age talking doesn't write very much about the look of Mordor he writes a great deal about the look of of humanoid but when it comes to Mordor there's not a lot of graphic description so I've inserted always signaled as where it is and when it is but those very graphic descriptions that he gives of Mordor when Sam and Frodo are on the last sort of a gasp of the of the quest so you get those and and of course the passing of the the passage of the Dead marshes from The Lord of the Rings and there's a reference to that in in the passage so um you get you get the kind of idea of of those things are just there and they're there's kind of like um I see them as kind of markers you know so uh for people who will go oh I remember that in the book or I remember oh yes that's in Jackson yes the thing is still doing taking the ring at yeah so um uh I think I think that gives it a um maybe a comfort a bit more comfort for those people who are going to come to this with a lot of names that they've never come across yeah uh and in some instances not much history to go with those names because you know it has to be said that there's a lot in this in this book well in where it's never been fleshed out it's never been you know there are stories there waiting waiting to be written yeah about some of those monarchs and some of those events you know some of them are just in passing you know but uh I mean I love the fact of um tar melodor for a Melody for example who and about his interest in astronomy and things like that they just glimpsed in a way there's not a lot about them but we know you know he was a man for For Whom The Business of Being a a king in and ruling a a country or a land an island um was of less importance to him than his interest in the heavens and learning about that but you know he put that aside and took up the mantle of responsibility but there's not a lot else there but yeah you've got a glimpse of a character that's really interesting and got his own story so I hope a lot of those things will encourage people to well to search out more but also I think maybe encourage some people who haven't done so to you know maybe some new fan art and new ways of wanting to interpret some of the material that's that's now perhaps a little more accessible than it was before yeah well like you said there's there's so many interesting nuggets and um you know I've always said that that part of the thing that I I both love and like wish that Tolkien had written more because there's so many mysteries in his works and um and then there's there's other things like you said like uh tarmendaldor who who kind of sounds like the you know a numenorian astronomer almost and and that's it and that's that's all we know and there's no no more to that story and it's kind of an interesting nugget of a story um now I'm I'm curious and I I do want to say before we move on to the next question I love that you've brought in things from Lord of the Rings I think that's an excellent uh I mean it's it's even more convenient than I thought it was it was it was already convenient the fact that you're pulling all these together because I've had so many people with um you know you mentioned the the rings of power show so many people say Okay I want to read about the second age what book should I get and I'm like well here's the thing and then I go on to list I'm like how deep do you want to go because I could give you a list of about six uh so now I can just say pick up the Fallen numenor that's much much easier easier entryway and the fact that you've brought in you know these descriptions from The Lord of the Rings because like you said there are many um I I think that's that's an even greater uh you know way for us to have kind of that uh that point of reference yeah there's a moment there's a moment in account I'm sure people people know the book will know it um but there's a moment in Council of elrond when Gandalf speaks about having been in the library at Minnesota I've gone through these old Scrolls which he believes only he and probably Sarah man I've ever seen before and he tells the the company it's not in the film so people weren't necessarily who just know tolkiens Lord of the Rings from the film version so you know this but there's a moment where where Gandalf speaks about having read these and found amongst them a description that isildor has given of the ring when he first took it up and put it on he talks about how it was hot to the touch but the moment he'd got it on he he acclimatized to wearing it and and how uh immediately he was felt this the specialness the preciousness of that ring now that that's he quotes that paper now that document so in in the fall of numenor I set the setting for that briefly and then we have what is clearly isildor's words as remember because they're in quotation marks as they are remembered by Gandalf and recounted at the Council of elrond and that coming quite late as it does which because it's placed at the moment when uh isildura having taken the ring at the overthrow of Sauron uh returns to consider where he what he's going to do next but before he sets off it's his immediate reactions to the ring and its power which is electrifying because here is suddenly you're aware of this is the this is uh the first person after Sauron to put on the ring yeah uh and and and to be aware of its powers and so on uh and that I think you know that fits in there in a way and if you want to go back and read the whole of the Council of error which is of course chock full of stuff about yeah a lot of other things um yeah I think I think it's a good good place so those things for me were really important because they were like these are as I say markers or Milestones of things which you could say ah right okay so that plays into that uh and I think that enriches maybe or could enrich your reading of of The Lord of the Rings when you reread it so yes I hope people will find it useful in that sense I mean sadly as I say because the rings of power as a series doesn't really tell you anything much about uh newmanor prior to before there's an awful lot in the book which uh you won't be you know we're never going to hear it yeah on Amazon are we so you know not even going to hear the story of velroth cyber actually so yeah it doesn't seem that way well it's a sculpture of it but I I even I a huge statue but I assume it's there Ross but um I think it's actually Arndale oh is it oh okay right yeah is there a label on it somewhere yeah I missed it but uh well but you know when elrond said that he was an orphan um I didn't make reference to uh the fact that he had a brother called el Ross who was the first king of numero um I kind of Wonder but you know there you are yeah now I'm curious uh I I want to be uh uh respectful of the time here so I I had a couple more questions I wanted to get in um now were were there any surprises to you you know as someone who who has obviously been around these texts and been a fan of tolkien's work for a long time um diving this deep into the writings where was there anything that surprised you along the way yeah a couple of things I think seeing all together uh the descriptions of the island itself I found absolutely fascinating um and what what I've done which is to explain how it's been arranged yeah tolkien's descriptions in a description of numenor and in the writings which uh uh are subsequently published in the the fall of the nature of of Middle Earth uh those documents a quite that they range all over the place so obviously as Tolkien was writing PT jotted them down and and things are strung together what I've done is separate all of those things out so we talk about the shape of the land you know it's geography if you like uh then we talk about the the natural life on the island so we're talking about the the foliage the trees the flowers the plants the animal life and and the animal life is it showed me I mean apart from dancing bears which people would remember if they read it but but also the other animals that are there and are not there and the fish the birds all this stuff is is there and I've drawn them together into sections so there will be a section which says um of birds and beasts or whatever and then you have all that material gathered together and then you read you can read a section about their cities and what their cities look like and the kind of their rituals that they follow particularly as they became more obsessed with death you know the the the tombs and the memorializing of uh uh of the Dead um and they're yearning for immortality uh or longer life uh and and the rituals that take place at um on the top of uh metal so those things that surprised me just how much that was written about uh numenor in terms of its um well everything about it really and I hadn't I hadn't quite grasped I don't think um uh I mean I don't see why I shouldn't have done because it's all there I haven't found anything wasn't there but just putting it into a different order um and you know we did John Howe and I did books of based on the Hobbit that ordered the Rings and uh uh Valerian uh and I now know that you could do a book about human or of the same kind um because there's so much about the island that's that's memorialized there so that I found really interesting and surprising the other the other thing I think was just this realizing of the fact that Tolkien had you know he put his own place markers into the story which presumably he would have gone back to I mean there are several Kings where we don't even know the names of the King's children or we know the names of one of them and there are two unnamed children two unnamed siblings but you know he never gave them names so this is and what that to me this isn't just about being an unfinished manuscript which of course in a sense it is because the whole of the legendarium is is incomplete in so many ways I mean we have this intensely detailed passage which represents what's in The Lord of the Rings yeah and you've got a very uh intensely told myth about the of the creation in the in the beginning of the silmarillions you've got all of those things but then there are all these areas where things obviously took place and years passed I mean you know I could see absolutely why Amazon framed their show or our framing they're showing the way that they are because you know you could not be a you could not create a cereal uh which is based on um 3440 something years you could not do that um because people would be dying off in every episode you know you'd be jumping year on year on year so um but the scope of that um the reason it intrigues it doesn't intrigue me pretty much but the the importance that I've realized with that is just how why we respond to the legendarium itself in the way that we do which is really because we're looking at bits and pieces of manuscript you know we're looking at it's like somebody unearthing uh elements of a past civilization and you've got these fragments it seems to me there's a similarity to say the Dead Sea say the Dead Sea Scrolls or early men manuscripts and documents or hieroglyphs uncovered on walls and things that what we've got is just a snapshot of something sometimes it's just the name of a monarch and that they ruled for 400 years but we know nothing about what happened during that time specifically so that to me enriches the story because it it makes it uh makes it more like what we understand about myths and legends because whenever you read myths and legends or folk tales or fairy tales even you're always tempted to say but what if you know and why did that happen and we don't know you know um so I I think that just enriches the the the concept of how Tolkien garnered all these bits and pieces for himself from his writings and saw it as being the discovery of a much bigger whole you know and uh I think that comes through I hope that comes through in the book very much absolutely yeah that's part of the magic I've always said the part of the magic of tolkien's world is how how much it feels like you're reading about actual history yeah and how you don't know stuff you know that right yeah yeah that that's fine I mean in anything in history you go I mean even in your own family you go oh my great grandfather has a picture of my great-grandfather what did he did I was like uniform he's wearing in this old photograph you know all those things we don't know are just part of what we understand of the tapestry of our own lives and what we've experienced in in our in our reading of literature and it's it's not that what makes it separate from say the writings of Dickens where where um Dickens creates an in an entire world in every one of his novels and peoples every characters who are very full and developed here you have something which is much closer to myth and Legend you know talking said that thing once in one of his letters about talking about this the second age as being time where a story becomes history the bridge between the first and second age is the point where the stories the myths the Legends suddenly become something historic well of course he's talking within his own the history of his own world and certainly the reshaping of the week we haven't talked about but the reshaping of the the world itself which happens with the cataclysm that the when when numenor is overthrown that in a sense is such a kind of resolution of those early mythologies about Middle Earth and the creation of of ADA uh and and it's there and now you're starting on to what is Real History which is the quest of the Ring now it's all of course fantasy and it's all made up but you you just can't help feeling that sense of of discovery of archeology I would say that's what it like I would liken it to so um that that kind of leads into my my next question um so as you mentioned you you kind of look at this from the vantage point of a Storyteller and that's what you know you are at your heart is a Storyteller so what is what would you say is the story of the second age what's at the heart of the second age story well Tolkien said it uh because he said in several letters but particularly in the letter he wrote to his uh friend and potential publisher he wasn't in there but Martin Waldman when he said that all stories are about a fall uh and of course here you have a devout Catholic speaking who is who is remembering the fact that the the both the Jewish and the Christian faith are based on the fact that mankind at some point or other in its Journey has fallen from what he could have been uh to what he then is and everything that follows is a result of that fall yeah uh and you know a famous British politician once said that that no great career ends in anything other than uh failure and and if you think about it that's true because all the mightiest uh dictators and powers that we've known in our world always at the end have come to some kind of either their you know decrepit and uh incapable rather like um Dennis or saying that might have been uh or they are totally overthrown like Hitler and other dictators so you know the the failure and falling are obviously similar Concepts so for him it's about fall it's about corruption I think uh and the way in which not just power corrupts but but desire and greed and all kinds of things can corrupt you and of course the story of the second age is because numanol's at the heart of it it is about this place which was a gift a gift from the gods given to men and and it was a kind of way of saying you can't have the immortality that the the elves have but this is you will have long life and if you look after this world which is a beautiful world that I've created for you we've created for you because in the way it was was Earth that this place is a gift and you it's your job to tend it and look after it not unlike perhaps the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis you know so you're touching right back into the judeo-christian uh stories about creation and the fall from from Perfection uh and from then on it's how that how those people change uh and they change through getting more powerful of getting more uh their belief that they are impregnable that they are if not Immortal they have long life and that everything is perfect but then the entry of that desire that desire for something more always to have more why should why should the elves have that immortality why should the gods deny us this you know we should go to the Valor we should say to them give us what before everything we've done and so that that that desire which then becomes corrupting in the sense that and it's only hinted at in some of these documents but the idea that you know that they reached the point of such degradation that they were taking the faith for and even pillaging people from uh Middle Earth yeah sacrifices um and their vanity the fact that they fall for sauron's deceits you know this is the story it's of a noble as so many myths are of course about the noble brought low the great warrior the great leader who is brought to ruin uh and the places ruined and but there is a judgment there's a judgment at the end but there is also salvation you know I mean I'm talking in these I'm talking in these spiritual terms because although Tolkien obviously did would have very strongly denied that any of this was was intended as kind of an allegorical right allegorical representation of what was in the Bible but nevertheless those elements are deep within his faith that you know was born into him by his by his but both his mother and also by the upbringing he then had when he was in um being looked after as a as a orphan that these these beliefs are deep within him and there is redemption there is Redemption for some uh as there is in The Lord of the Rings you know Redemption the Redemption for Gollum is that he finally completes the quest which even Frodo wasn't able to execute when it came to the point and and there's salvation for the Exiles who were true to the spirit of what numenor stood for yeah that you know the very destruction of newmanor gives them safe passage to Middle Earth what dangerous but eventually it's safe right yeah seemingly destroy him but even then the fall happens again because isildura having got the ring himself cannot let it go and keeps it and it's his undoing and it becomes Golem's undoing and nearly becomes Frodo's undoing at the very last but so I think that's what the story is about it's about the perfect being distorted changed it's about corruption it's about Envy it's about greed it's about beauty despoiled um and it's about how we always were talking to my mind there's this thing about these are the things you should be watching for in your society and I I said I was giving a talk at oxamute for the Tolkien Society uh in the summer and I mean we were talking about the scaring of the Shire which um uh and which I managed to keep within the radio version with a bit of this problem but to me that's what's so vital is that this the the everything that goes these huge you know big fast matters of uh of honor and Valor and all the rest of it and bravery all of those are as We Know not not enough in comparison with the small people who carry out the the tasks like Frodo and Sam but we also know that the battle actually ends not uh on the plains of more golf the battle not in front of the black Gates it actually ends on the doorstep of Bag End uh and you know that which seems to me to be Tolkien and maybe it was born onto him by the by his experiences in the first world Lauren his reactions to the Second World War I don't know but I think I think there's a sense of talking understanding that uh the fight isn't always to the most powerful it's often the weakest but most importantly that the enemy as Lincoln said famously in one of his speeches and uh when he was president in America was that the enemy doesn't come from without the enemy ultimately will come from within and and You Know The Enemy Within is an awful lot of what Tolkien is writing about yeah definitely in the we see that in numenor for sure yeah I just see it in Lord of the Rings you know you see it with Dennis or you see it with characters who are um you know complex in their reaction to things you know could you know could have been it could have been born through Galadriel but she resists the Temptation or Gandalf who resists the temptation but you know dinosaur Falls for it you know faramir could have fallen for it but didn't in the end yeah I mean I find it interesting that faram is so perplexed in in in Jackson's films because that's not how he's represented in the book but Boromir is a perfect example you know an honorable man who who makes the wrong decision because actually there's a weakness there and and weakness leads to the falling you know if you're if you're frail like I am as an old man uh if you're frail you fall over easy you know so falling and failing is is what the story is about but I think it it touches just about everything Tolkien wrote if you even go back to The Hobbit where it seems subliminal there it's even there in the greed of the dwarves and they and the the greed of each of the parties particularly in the uh you know towards the end where they're that they've got a common enemy and yet they're fighting amongst themselves you know and and my goodness doesn't it speak to the lives that we are all living today you know I mean in different terms but yeah yeah yeah I'm sure your reaction to politics and political scene in in America and I certainly know that ours in Britain in the year 2022 uh it's very much that we're looking at all of those elements and just seeing how they're playing into our daily lives yeah you get you can't turn your head it seems like without some political thing going on and yeah that's why I prefer to to spend my time in Middle Earth as much as I can I don't think now I I just had a couple more quick questions for you um so you mentioned um we mentioned a couple times here you know the the book obviously is gonna have some uh you know uh crossover where where folks are are looking to this book after or perhaps uh before who knows um with with the rings of power coming out um so have you watched the series and if so yes in the first season yep okay so what so what did you think of you know as someone who's uh been diving into the second age material well I'm very conscious that it's the first of Five Seasons so uh uh you know I I don't know how it's going to develop I mean the first season in in its first Eight Episodes has already uh thrown up many surprises of things of great interest so I I can't predict how it's how it's going to go the things I feel most positive about the rings of power series is that Amazon have certainly put as you we crudely say the money's on the screen because it looks Sensational more importantly than it looking Sensational to me is the fact that they very very wisely and obviously they've had John Howe on board as working on the the uh conceptual design yeah that it it Chimes well with Peter Jackson's films you know you feel comfortable in entering this world it is to you no surprise that uh the Elven structures that we see are similar to the ones we remember from Rivendell or right or minister of so these you know the whole architectures of men and elves is very much that that we knew from from The Lord of the Rings films and so I think people in will come into the world and think feel comfortable with being there it won't be a huge culture shock yeah you know the kind of Comedy shot we would have had I'm sure though I'm sure it would have been a brilliant film if uh guillerma de toro had made The Hobbit right yeah I think I think then we would have gone whoa that's nothing like what we saw in with all the ring really exciting but nothing like what we saw there so this is that this is an astute move of Amazon to get John on board John Howard board and to say we're gonna make it you know it's it's honoring the Jackson films in its look I mean the play you know this what you see on screen looks fantastic I think yeah where you get to see the New Zealand landscape it is as it was in the Jackson films breathtaking I hope they match that when they are filming in Scotland and Ireland and Wales or wherever they're shooting now for the second season but I I think the if if I have issues with it it is to do with it's to do with the minutiae I really I'm watching a drama unfolding and I'm constantly having to just readjust my my my state of mind to say yeah that didn't actually happen there but I can see why it's happening there in this you know in this story yeah um there are lots of questions I have do I really believe that the stranger is Gandalf uh and who else could it be you know is it is it rather gas some people say well even if it's radicals he shouldn't be there either right I'm really hoping for blue wizard I maybe maybe they even they shouldn't be there Matt so you know I mean we know that this story came at the beginning of the third age so uh you know but who knows yeah I've toyed with the thought of Could It Be Tom Bombadil who is the eldest um as Gandolf at first episode yeah I don't know um could it be could it be Beyond and then I thought no it can't be Beyond because it's not a significant enough character for people to to register from the film because Jackson kind of threw away Beyond in The Hobbit he didn't really give in the the stature which I think he should have had in the films but I think it was there but it got edited out yeah I I that is one of my laments from The Hobbit is a little bayorn we got yeah yeah well and so much went into making it you know I know I know how much was shot and the extent of it and so on but so you know there are those Mysteries hanging there you know why is I mean inevitably it was inevitable galadrian would be a warrior Queen you know that was that was written in this in the Stars we knew that was going to happen it had to happen um I am I am perplexed by elrond's involvement uh with Kelly brimbor and being uh involved with the forging of the Rings and certainly the fact that he seems to be he doesn't seem to have a relationship which he should have with the past of juvenile you know his brother um those things perplex me but you know we have to accept it as it is and what it is the same way as we accepted uh Jackson's interpretation and much will go on and change as as the series develops I'm sure I have no doubt about that I think there's some very good acting in it I think there's some uh less than great script writing but you know the the problem which one always faces with Tolkien is how do you balance people talking like real people and at the same time people are talking about talking like heroic uh characters from mythology yeah you know and and Tolkien himself doesn't doesn't reconcile that for you you just you just live with it in the book but yeah it's a challenge when you put it on when I was putting it on radio or Jackson putting it on film the characters suddenly move into a kind of high language which uh is not the the common speech you know yeah so I think they've got a lot of a lot of challenges I think it was slightly slow getting off the ground uh first episode I thought where they had so much to try and convey but I thought it had it had great Pace great Energy Great drama um the dramatic action scenes are what you would want from action scenes so you just have to put your mind in a different place when you're yeah watching it you know you have to say oh I didn't know that mithril actually was the salvation of the of the Elvis race but there we are oh I do now right um and you know it's one I'm really struggling with Brian but you know if you if you stick a bit of mithril near your ailing white tree it will come back to life and that's new but but also you know what we have to remember I've been talking talking despite the fact that he talked about you know many minds and many hands and so on carrying on the mythology uh I think the truth of the matter is that he would have reacted quite strongly to any anything that that changed what it was what he'd done you know I when I was writing the radio version I was constantly thinking oh my God what would you think about and I'm doing now you know they would have hated just simply by putting the the the the Lord of the Rings into chronological narrative order he would have loved that so you know but the fact is that there's two things that are really important I really want to say one is that that it is the the thing itself is unchanged the books are there the story and the mythology as created by Tolkien is not it's not uh subsumed by anything that the rest of us have done yeah and it will endure beyond that and can always be gone back to so that is you know this is that's a very important thing we're not talking about a an oral tradition another story where now we read the brothers grim and we read the version of the story that they tell us about uh Cinder or not Cinderella but Sleeping Beauty for example or Red Riding Hood or whatever the story might be still white in the Seven Dwarfs best example we know what they wrote about it and people have gone on changing it since but we don't know of all the oral versions that the brothers Grim heard told to them what other versions We don't know how they chose the version that they wrote down you know so yeah so that in a way but a lot of the Rings is different because it's all there yeah everything that Tolkien wrote himself in his lifetime and everything that Christopher has Unearthed edited and put together is all there and nothing that anybody does on film uh in music on the stage on radio is ever going to wipe that out you can just go back to it and and the second thing is I suppose that I feel also feel strongly that if people come to anything whether it's Jackson's films or the rings of power what they may take from it is just the superficial thing that they enjoy watching now they may also think I want to know more about this yeah maybe I'll go to the books about this I know that when Jackson's film was opened I saw people on trains and the Subways sitting there reading the book because the film was out and they wanted to go to the book to find out more so it will lead people back to the books and if it doesn't lead people back to the books the people will still come away with a sense and essence of this extraordinary creativity that is Tolkien so they will have some you know grain of element of of what what they're actually thinking about just as in yeah you know you read one Jane Austen book or one Charles Dickens book you won't necessarily understand the whole of that writer's characterizations and plots and stories but you'll have an an inkling of what their world their creativity was like and that's vitally important to me absolutely um so last question um do you have any uh what's what's next for you do you have any future books planned or is this kind of like the uh the calm after the storm I guess we could say uh it is to come after the storm um I I don't know um it's a short answer I have no idea whether there's uh anything talking down the line but then that's been my life in connection with Tolkien for over 40 years you know uh when when I first read the book I had no idea that I would one day get to do a radio version that was 41 years ago um I had no idea when I'd done that that somebody would say why don't we do some books of maps with John Howe doing pictures and you doing a kind of introduction and gazetteer that came out of nowhere well not quite but you know what I mean uh and and uh then the movie books you know when the movies were starting I had no involvement with the film other than uh um that Peter Jackson knew of my radio versions and you other things I've done uh and then I became involved with the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and Jackson's personal story so you know they've just always been these kind of things that have come up and in between miles I've done radio programs about Tolkien and his legacy put together compilations and things uh so this is this is another one but um it's just another stage in the journey which made you know maybe the last one for me I don't know but uh it may not um what else I want to do yeah I've got other things that I want to do I'm also um sort of focusing on trying to get my physical life better I'm 73 now so I'm you know not as young as I was and although there's a young body trapped inside this decaying um corpse uh I'm uh I'm I'm anxious to try and get myself to a point where I'm fitter than I was so I'm going to have some operations to help my uh my seized up body uh and uh that would give me a new lease of life but yeah there's other things I'd like to do there's a love to write a book about my favorite children's books something I'd quite like to do I've got a sort of starting book about Venice which is a place I love I'm passionate about and I love incidentally the way that the rings of power have used this kind of essence of Venice in uh in their creation of the visuals which comes across yeah because Tolkien himself um wrote in one of his letters and said I've just returned from humanor uh no actually Venice uh so we know that there is an element of of that uh Phoenician yeah Seascape actually which is you know a layer upon layer of uh age and history powered one on top of the other and and of course floating on water rather like even though so I'd love to finish the book I would like to write about Venice but I've just had to do it for myself because nobody wants to publish it um during lockdown I started writing some humorous versus Ogden Nash like I'd like to find an illustrator who would do those illustrate them and publish them so yeah I've got things there but nothing nothing I know about but my life as as a writer which is now over well nearly yeah nearly 50 years yeah um has always been just a series of discoveries and uh you know obviously as you get older you don't have the same stamina that I had when I was 20 or 30 or 40. but um I do I do still have the desire to do tell stories you know I excite you the one thing I've always wanted to do uh in my not just my career in my life actually is to entice and excite people about things that excite me you know I don't think that I've ever done anything in my career only a couple of times I would admit to where I've done something which was I didn't really have uh a heart in uh my soul in it yeah and I've been lucky you know because I've worked with books Tolkien C.S Lewis Carroll Ray Bradbury people who are either are you like Ray Bradbury or people writers about whom I felt passionately like like Lewis and Tolkien or Lewis Carroll uh or James Barry or any of the th white any of the other writers Mervin Peak I keep thinking of people who whose lives I was have been part of in some way or other either initially or distantly uh and who have played into my work and that's for me it's like A Milne who I also have a great interest in the poo hey Milton his most favorite book uh happens to be one of my favorite books is Kenneth Graham's the wind of the Willows and I know once wrote If I was found myself in the dark and the judge said to me is the one thing you as you put on the black cat to signify that I was going to go to execution is the one last thing you want to say to uh the the gentleman the ladies of the jury uh melon said yes I'd like to say your honor if you haven't read the Lord of the Rings If you haven't read the wind of the Willows you must do so because it is one of the finest folks in the world so I think that's kind of my passion that if if at the time somebody said to me is anything any final words and I would say yes go and read these books and of course all of the Rings would be absolutely a moment no question well Brian thank you so much for your time today um everyone make sure you go uh snag your copy of the fall of numenor it is out as of today if you're watching this interview it is out there's both a regular and a deluxe edition available as well as we didn't even mention this but the audiobook uh narrated by the great Samuel West who's done a number of previous books for talking with me chipping in with the introduction and notes as well okay I was wondering because uh you know that's what uh Samuel did with his with his father on uh who's who's unfortunately passed away now um but with Baron and luthien and the fall of gondolin they went back and forth one reading Christopher's Notes One reading the story so you guys did a similar thing for this audiobook fantastic well there you go my second breakfast mug to you cheers to you and uh to all your uh all your Watchers and listeners I can't remember how many people have watched our last conversation last time I looked it was some astronomical number but uh it's been great fun to be with you today Matt as always absolutely well yeah it's always a pleasure Brian I would you definitely have an open invitation anytime and for those of you who haven't already I am a huge advocate for the the BBC Radio drama that Brian wrote and it's wonderful it's a it's a Mainstay on my Audible app on my phone I pop it on all the time in the car um so check that out check out our previous interview where we talked for something like three hours about the BBC Radio drama there's some wonderful behind the scenes story about that and some behind the scenes stories about uh the Peter Jackson films like uh some really amusing things about Christopher Lee I'll just use it at that if that's not enough I don't know what it is but Brian thank you again so much for joining us and it's really really looking forward to the book and uh um folks go go grab your copy and and dive in to tolkien's Second age as edited by Mr Brian Sibley and we will see you next time on nerd of the Rings

Channel: Nerd of the Rings

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Keywords: tolkien, lord of the rings, lotr, hobbit, the hobbit, nerd of the rings, silmarillion, fall of numenor, brian sibley, brian sibley tolkien, tolkien brian sibley, fall of numenor brian sibley, fall of numenor review, fall of numenor book, the fall of numenor, fall of numenor sibley, what is fall of numenor, fall of numenor interview, new tolkien book, tolkien book, tolkien second age, second age book, second age tolkien book

Id: NxagijikUqs

Length: 77min 39sec (4659 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022