Tolkien experts to give talk at Cambridge Waterstones on Friday

Author and academic Nick Groom will be discussing his new book Twenty-First-Century Tolkien at Waterstones in Cambridge with Tolkien Society Secretary and Trustee Hannah McDonald on Friday (August 4).

The work is an original exploration of how Middle-Earth is relevant to us today and has been hailed by Mail on Sunday as ‘Fascinating... Wonderfully exhilarating...In a rousing finale, Groom suggests that Tolkien is exactly the writer we need at this particularly perilous moment, as we emerge, Hobbit-like, from our holes and try to imagine a new kind of life in this post-pandemic age.”

Meanwhile, The Literary Review writes: “Each chapter displays a mastery of both the works in question -’ whether books or adaptations - and of the vast corpus of Tolkien scholarship. Narratives of literary production or of Hollywood bureaucratic processes rarely come as absorbing as Groom's… Illuminating… Groom's explorations of Tolkien's sources... are always provocative and often ingenious.”

Nick Groom is Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter. He has written widely on literature, music, and contemporary art, and is the author of twenty books and editions including The Forger's Shadow (2002), The Union Jack (2006), The Gothic (2012), The Seasons (2013), The Vampire (2018), and, most recently, Twenty-First-Century Tolkien (2022). He divides his time between his students in East Asia, and his family in Devon.

Nick Groom is at Waterstones in Cambridge from 6pm on Friday August 4. Tickets are £8.