You can buy the house where Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings

If you fancy owning a slice of literature history - and are also immensely rich - you can now buy the house where J.R.R. Tolkien wrote all of The Lord of the Rings, most of The Hobbit and a chunk of The Silmarillion.

The house is located in Northmoor Road, Oxford, and was where the Tolkien family lived from 1930 to 1947. The house will set you back a cool £4.5 million for a six-bedroom property with a significant amount of space surrounding it. The house was built in the 1920s as a residence for staff at Oxford University, so was pretty new when Tolkien acquired it. The house has been mostly left in the same state it was in when it was built.

Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the late 1920s, although appears to have only started typing it up around 1930, and it was published in September 1937. Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings just a few weeks later, completing it in 1947 (although it took another two years to type up and edit, and a further five years to publish). Tolkien also did extensive work on The Silmarillion whilst living in the property.

George R.R. Martin buys a movie theatre

In one of the more random news bits from this week, it has been revealed that George R.R. Martin has bought the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The theatre was closed in 2006. Martin, a regular attendee of the theatre after he moved to Santa Fe in 1979, has not yet confirmed his plans for the property. In a statement he did clarify that this project does not mean he'll be making popcorn for attendees rather than getting on with his books.

Rumours that GRRM is going to hang the above on the wall have not yet been substantiated.

"I will not be doing it myself, of course. So please, readers, fans, don't get nuts. I am a novelist and a screenwriter, not a theatre manager, it won't be me standing at the concession stand asking if you want butter on your popcorn. My job remains the same as before: editing anthologies, creating and producing television and writing the occasional script, and... first, foremost, always... completing A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. This does not change that." 

Martin bought the property under the company name 'Faceless Man', hinting that he may also be planning to use the cinema as the headquarters for an international guild of shapechanging assassins.

All men must die. Actually, only those who ask, "Is it in 3D?"

Coldplay drummer joins GAME OF THRONES cast

Will Champion, the drummer (and also occasional guitarist, bassist and singer) of Coldplay, has joined the cast for the third season of Game of Thrones. Champion will have a small role as 'a drummer'. Other details about his role are shrouded in secrecy.

Champion is the fourth notable musician to work on the show. Former easy listenin' crooner Jerome Flynn has a recurring major role as Bronn whilst ex-Blockhead Wilko Johnson is Ser Ilyn Payne, of course, whilst the lead singer of Snow Patrol, Gary Lightbody, also has a cameo role in the upcoming third season.

New Yorkers get to experience the tastes of the Seven Kingdoms

Top American chef Tom Colicchio has created a number of dishes inspired by the HBO series Game of Thrones. Starting next week, HBO food trucks will be handing out these dishes at various locations in New York City to passers-by.

As a way of marketing a show, this is definitely one of the more interesting techniques I've heard of. HBO have also published the recipe for the lemon cakes (PDF) mentioned in the clip.

Did George R.R. Martin create wookies?

The answer to the question is, "No, of course not, that would be too random for words." However, it does transpire that he did inspire the visual look of Chewbacca in the original Star Wars movie through an interesting chain of events.


How it works is thusly: in July 1975 Martin's short story 'And Seven Times Never Kill Man!' was published in Analog. Artist John Shoenherr created some artwork for the story which is clearly very Wookie-esque. In itself not entirely damning, until it is revealed that Star Wars conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie was handed a copy of this very picture by George Lucas (who apparently had claimed it was from the 1930s, not just a few months earlier) in late 1976 as part of his ideas for what Chewbacca would look like. McQuarrie then developed this image into the final look for the Chewbacca character. A rather telling point that the original Shoenherr picture was inspirational is that it has the alien using a weapon that looks very similar to Chewbacca's trademark bowcaster weapon, a detail missing from McQuarrie's rendition, indicating the original was used as a reference by the prop department.

This isn't the first time that GRRM has inadvertently contributed to the creation of an iconic race without realising it. Fellow SF writer Charles Stross 'borrowed' the name 'githyanki' from GRRM's 'Thousand Worlds' SF setting for a race of monsters he was creating for an official Dungeons and Dragons product in the late 1970s. The name and the race caught on, becoming an iconic D&D race still present in the latest iteration of the game. Martin was unaware of this until he was asked about it by a fan during the early 2000s.

Ran at Westeros has hinted that since the ursine alien race in Return of the Jedi who help bring down the Empire was supposed to be the Wookies but was replaced with something cuter and more marketable, we could possibly blame GRRM for the chain of events that led to the creation of the Ewoks (!!!). Although Martin would probably prefer it if we didn't.