The Lord of the Rings: When Tolkien himself wrote the adaptation episodes

In 1955, the British JRR Tolkien, author of novels Lord of the RingsContacted someone named Terence Tiller (poet and radio producer) who wanted to adapt three of his works for BBC radio.

Lord of the Rings Over 700 pages long, it tells the story of a group of adventurers (“Fellowship of the Ring”) on a mission to destroy an evil magic ring and prevent it from falling into the hands of darkness. Lord.

Surprised by Tiller’s proposal, Tolkien was not at all convinced of the feasibility of the project and wrote to the producer in 1956:

Here is a book that does not lend itself to dramatic or semi-dramatic portage. If one tries, it must have space, lots of space.

Indeed, the radio adaptation begins over a period of fairly short episodes and only describes everything in voice. The author is skeptical of purely oral presentation of his work:

(…) Personally, I think it calls for an older art like “mime” rather than something more dramatic, which leads to too much emphasis on dialogue (and removes much of the decor). (…) I think your job will be very difficult.

However, once the project began, Tolkien invested as a consultant on the adaptation two towers and return of the king, answering Tiller’s questions about Nazgul accents, costume and attitude, but not only! Indeed, in May 2022 Stuart Lee, Oxford archivist and specialist Lord of the RingsFound the scripts for this radio adaptation and discovered they were done by Tolkien himself!

These scripts are a real nugget in Middle-earth history, as the radio adaptation broadcast in 1956 was not preserved in the BBC archives. Considering the worldwide success of the trilogy today, this may seem incredible, but we must remember that at the time the books had just been published (1954-1955) and had not yet had international success.

Thus, the scripts found by Stuart Lee are our only trace of this adaptation narrated by Derek Hart.

Despite his involvement, Tolkien remains bitter about this version of his books being condensed into 12 episodes of 30 to 45 minutes each. between the mistakes made by Tiller (namely making Old Willow an “ally of Mordor”) and the outcome he judges “idiot” in one of his lettersTolkien turns down several proposals for further adaptations, especially in cartoons.

Another, more famous radio version appeared in 1981, eight years after Tolkien’s death. Unlike the 1955 version, the 1981 version has been preserved and can still be heard. 13 episodes for one hour. In particular, we discover that Frodo is played by … Ian Holm, who will play Bilbo in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.

Annotated scenarios now appear in this book, Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher TolkienAvailable from June, but only when writing in Shakespeare.

What would Tolkien think of Peter Jackson’s version and how would he deal with all his false connections?!