Screw Tolkien
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It’s always good, I feel, to have one thing you feel irrationally passionate about on which you can rant and rave without really worrying about whether you’re right or in the majority. As long as this thing is of no real importance it acts as a safety valve, allowing you to deal with the important stuff in a level-headed, fair way. At least that’s the idea.
Currently I’m getting all irrational on the arse of Birmingham-based Tolkien fanatics. The grandaddy of this insanity is the Moseley Ent, a proposed statue of a tree made of steel to be stuck in the middle of Moseley High Street to celebrate the fact that Tolkien grew up there. Or near there. Or something.
Even allowing for my opinion of the Lord of the Rings novels as appallingly written garbage that spawned a torrent of “high-fantasy” evil (and a rather good trilogy of films, but even so) I can concede that there’s a place for some kind of memorial or marker to the man, since he is an internationally known Brummie (even though he worked at Oxford Uni for 34 years, but we won’t mention that) and by all accounts not a bad person. But a giant metal tree epitomises the insane blindness of fanaticism that his latter-day followers constantly exhibit in that they can’t see what a stunningly stupid idea this is. Not only is it aesthetically horrible, it’s a tree made out of metal!
Tolkien had, shall we say, major issues with the effects of industry on the countryside which means he had issues with Birmingham as a general concept since however you swing it Birmingham = Industrial Revolution. The city’s coat of arms, while representing “art and industry” in equal measures, has a muscular arm wielding a large hammer protruding from the top above the legend “Forward”. It doesn’t take too much speculation to realise why young JRR left the place. Birmingham and the Black Country is Isengard. In his eyes we are orcs. Love you too, matey.
But what really really annoys me about the Birmingham Tolkien Idiots is how all this nonsense puts Tolkien-shaped blinkers on these areas, noting local places primarily for how they “inspired” the man. Sarehole Mill is said to be The Shire, except it’s not. It’s Sarehole Mill. Meanwhile the fact that there are two relatively tall towers in the area is incontrovertible proof that without Tolkien seeing this rare and unusual sight he’d never have come up with the concept of “two towers”.
A great artist takes the mundane and the ordinary and makes it fantastic. This tedious celebrating of how Birmingham “inspired” Tolkien pretty much boils down to “Tolkien saw some stuff here and had some ideas, which he later wrote about in Oxford, but we won’t mention that, nor that his ideas mainly stemmed from not liking what he saw.”
The vast majority of people living in Moseley and the surrounding areas couldn’t give an arse about what Tolkien was inspired by 100 years ago because they’re part of a vibrant, living community that, frankly, has more going for it than the location of a bit of woodland which caused some bloke to think up Tom Bloody Bombadil.
And finally, what did Tolkien ever actually do for Birmingham? Not that we don’t already, but wouldn’t it make more sense to celebrate the Quakers, industrialists, artists and thinkers that made the city what it is rather than some bloke who saw some trees and a couple of towers and then fucked off as soon as he was old enough?
But no, we have to have a metal tree, because Tolkien was all about the metal trees.
This is the personal blog and main internet hub-thing for Pete Ashton. What you'll find here is a seemingly random collection of stuff I want to talk about and share. 
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I agree with you with respect to the Birmingham Tolkein Fanatics (BTFs). Tolkein got two things out of Brum - an education and a priest-father-figure who made sure he got that education. He didn’t give much back though I believe he did work hard to promote preserving both Moseley Bog and Sarehole Mill (though maybe he was shamed into doing so after selling so many books!)
There seems to be a concensus among his biographers and his son that the twin towers as well as Sarehole Mill did inspire Tolkein as he wrote the Hobbit, etc., but in reality these are merely props to paint the universal picture of good versus evil.
As to the Shire, it is far more likely that his mother’s family, the Staffords, who hailed from the Evesham area, influenced his interpretation of Hobbitland. In fact Bag End really does exist some distance west of Alcester. And when in Oxford he enjoyed walking in North Oxfordshire. There is a place on the road between Chipping Norton and Moreton-in-Marsh where a pillar of limestone is called the “Four Counties Stone” representing where Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire all meet (or met at one time). This has an uncanny resemblence to the center of the Shire (which consisted of four “farthings”). So I suggest the Shire is located further south than Hall Green, etc.
The whole question of trees is interesting. Tolkein apparently did love trees and loved “Leafy Warwickshire”. He saw the hammer of Birmingham’s industry coming down on his beloved Forest of Arden (though in actual fact most of Arden’s oaks were long since gone to build the British Navy). When you drive up the Stratford Road through Shirley, Hall Green and SparkHill/SparkBrook it is hard to imagine that this was once a royal forest. A hundred years ago Hall Green was green but the suburbs were fast encroaching.
Tolkein never did anything for Birmingham other than lend his name to the preservation projects noted above. But his name is good for tourism so it has been over-used to the point of nausea. The steel Ent is an interesting parody of Tolkein’s acute awareness that industry was destroying the countryside. But how much better the living tree/monster at the Custard Factory to represent the concept.
One more thing - The most important people in Birmingham’s history are probably the members of the Lunar Society. They drove the Age of Enlightenment to new heights that only a century of Victorians could destroy!
A century of Victorians? I thought it was four days of rioting. Followed by a century of victorians, of course.
But yeah, it would be so much better to have a statue of some locally-Enlightened-person or people. Or a big hammer. Or a horse. Or maybe just plant some *real* trees. Fifty of them right there on the village ‘green’. Giant leylandii, perhaps. Tolkien would have liked that.
I don’t think the Birmingham Riots actually ended the Age of Enlightenment, they only forced Priestley’s departure to America. But before 1900 things were beginning to change and the influence of the Lunar Society began to wane considerably. I suggest a hundred years of Victorian influence started to rise, followed by the quakers and Joe Chamberlain starting the great reforms at the beginning of the 20th Century. There’s about a hundred year gap between the two great phases of Birmingham’s (recent) history.
BTW, etat, there is a fine statue (I think it’s still in front of the old registry office on Broad Street) of Boulton, Watt and Murdoch - admittedly the more industrialist-minded of the Lunar Men.
That statue has been taken away for refinishing or summat, and so has the statue of Thomas Attwood in Chamberlain Square.
Since there’s already an Iron Man down there, perhaps the Steel Tree could go somewhere nearby.
Quakers. Who, besides the Lloyd family and the Cadburys? I haven’t heard any other famous names identified as Quakers.
There’s Joseph Sturge, slavery abolitionist and general good egg, though he’s somewhat obscure at the moment. This should all change when my flatmate’s current job is completed. In the meanwhile, here’s some photos of his statue.
Lloyd and Cadbury - names that still mean something significant in the 21st Century and Quakers are not exactly the most publicity-prone folk in the world! The point is, rather, that Birmingham, as an anti-establishment focal point, encouraged people like Cadbury and Chamberlain to do the right thing.
But I really like the idea of the floozie, the iron man and the ent all in the same place as. . . . Queen Victoria!
Ahh I do love a good ranting post. I don’t really have much to say on the topic itself but I DO think you are right that we should all have one thing which we are allowed to “go off on” as and when and HOW we feel.
I’ve still to find mine though… slowly narrowing it down… currently have a few hundreds such issues (hey, everyone ELSE is an idiot… right?)
That was a great blog post Pete. Tolkein was a virulently anti-modern writer. That his barmy ideas about pastoral idylls and the inherent evil of industry and all it brings (such as wealth, working class political agency and so on) are so popular today says something quite sad about society.
I’m off to tug my forelocks, guv’nor.
J…
Karen says there’s a tree near the Ladywood Art Centre that’s festooned with old shoes. I daresay that the Ent will quickly develop a similar set of attire. Not that I have any old shoes laying around waiting for some new purpose in life, mind you.
The Easter Cross on the green looks decidedly underwhelming in relation to the Ent proposals. Does that mean a victory of pagans over christians? Or does it mean that there’ll have to be a bigger - a much bigger - cross?
Without meaning any offence at all to any Brummies (Brummies are quite nice, at least in general, and the ones I’ve actually met), Birmingham is a bit of a shithole, from my experience. But it’s not as bad as Sheffield.
And building a tree out of steel? Why not just plant an actual tree?!
Didn’t you know? Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.
And it isn’t. A lot has changed over the last decade or so.