Bronwyn Graves

On 2 September 1973 J.R.R. #Tolkien died aged 81. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is the best-selling book of the 20th Century, and is joined by seminal works The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.

He may have died 52 years ago but his influence and legacy lives on in us all. Namárië. #BookSky

Absolutely, Robin of Sherwood, especially Michael Praed’s rendition.

First edition of The Hobbit sells for a ‘record-breaking’ £43,000 Only a few hundred from the original 1,500 copy print run of Tolkien’s masterpiece are thought to still exist A rare first edition of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit that was found during a house clearance has sold at auction for a “record-breaking” £43,000. Bought by a private collector in the UK, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937. Of those, only “a few hundred are believed to still remain”, according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the novel without a dust cover on a bookcase at a home in Bristol. Continue reading...

First edition of The Hobbit sells for a ‘record-breaking’ £43,000

new profile pic incoming

This is something we can all agree on 🤝🏻📚🔍

📷 strange_aeons_

#History

Recreation Iron Age roundhouse with thatched conical roof

Interior ceiling of recreation Iron Age roundhouse showing ring beam and thatch

Imagined painted interior decor of a reconstruction Iron Age roundhouse

We dig roundhouses (both literally and spiritually)

This one at Cranborne Ancient Techonology Centre in #Dorset is particularly fine 😍

📷 Open Day July 2025

#IronAge #Archaeology

If you're a historian, or a deeply interested layperson, reading broadly is the best possible thing you can do to improve your understanding of the periods you're most interested in. Other places and times give you points of comparison, new ideas, new ways of thinking about your material.

Tryfan a mountain in Eryri with a human for scale

The mighty Tryfan and an Oliver

A new Irish writer is getting rave reviews – but nobody knows who they are. That gives me hope | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett Pen names have a long history. Now Liadan Ní Chuinn is shunning publicity in an industry that demands ever more exposure, says Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

A new Irish writer is getting rave reviews – but nobody knows who they are. That gives me hope | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

We all know about the hallucination problem but it's quite extraordinary to see it invent such a detailed, plausible fabrication. I'm in the privileged position of being able to saunter into the Bodleian Library and check - most people could be forgiven for believing the machine.

‘There is no political power without power over the archive’ Titles banned, data deleted, the nation’s librarians sacked without explanation – Donald Trump’s war on books is a threat to democracy across the world, ...

American libraries are under attack. I have written a long piece for @theobserveruk.bsky.social on the MAGA assault on libraries (and archives), and the strong librarians fighting back. observer.co.uk/news/interna...

I’m so proud of this stamp series, which shares the stories of four places where 2SLGBTQIA+ people in Canada came together to organize and to celebrate. Thank you to all of the consultants who guided us as we worked on these stamps and to Tim Singleton for the amazing illustrations!

And the weather is fine. 🇮🇪

A detail sketch of a heavy oak doorway set in rough stone. The Heavy brown oak or is open onto a view of fields and a blue sky with two birds.

Transept door, Rock of Cashel. #urbansketching #art #artyear #inkandwash #inkandwatercolour #watercolour #Ireland 🇮🇪

English Bluebell

We can’t photograph every English Bluebell in our woodland as it would take years, but we will share some every day

Bluebell #14

I would love one and will happily cover shipping to Canada! 🙋🏻‍♀️

Well, this is delightful.
(Apparently, Bridget made it home safely.)

The Art Nouveau embroidery of Ann Macbeth (1875 - 1948), Scottish artist and member of artistic group known as the Glasgow Girls #WomensArt

Medieval Tales of Merlin and Arthur, Hidden for Centuries, Return to Light Cambridge University researchers found a manuscript with rare Arthurian tales bound into a ledger more than 400 years old and used advanced technology to reveal its contents.

Incroyable!

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/w...

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Historiated initial B in blue and red with a foliage frame around writing

A lovely B!
Another in my series of images from medieval manuscripts
#SomethingBeautiful #MedievalSky

An old, abandoned Quarrymen's chapel at Cwmorthin Quarry, in Snowdonia, North Wales. The building is in ruins, with sunlight streaming through the broken windows. Behind the chapel, the hillside stretches upward, bathed in soft, natural light

The grass
Wrecked them in its draughty tides,
Grew from the chimney-stack like smoke,
Burned its way through the weak timbers.
That was nature's jest, the sides
Of the old hull cracked, but not with mirth.

RS Thomas "Depopulation of the Hills" 1955

📷 my own - Cwmorthin Quarry, Eryri, Gogledd Cymru

Seamus Heaney ‘s poem in memory of his mother #seamusheaney #MothersDay

Tunnelled footpath portal.

Seventeenth century river bridge portal.

Derelict pumphouse portal.

Lime kiln portal.

A thread of interdimensional portals I've found on walks in the British countryside.

Pictured is an annotated version of a fold-out map which was included in early editions of the Lord of The Rings. The map shows readers Tolkien’s fantasy world ‘Middle-earth’. The annotations are by Tolkien himself, and were for the benefit of Pauline Baynes, an artist who was creating an illustrated poster map of Middle-earth. Baynes ripped the map out of her own 1954 copy of Lord of the Rings and took it to Tolkien, who covered it with notes, including many extra place names that do not appear in the book. Since most were in his own invented Elvish language he helpfully translated some: ‘Eryn Vorn [= Black Forest] a forest region of dark [pine?] trees.’ The annotations give an insight into how vividly Tolkien pictured Middle-earth in his mind, and how thorough his research was. They include a series of geographical pointers about the latitude of key locations: ‘Hobbiton is assumed to be approx. at latitude of Oxford,’. ‘Minas Tirith is about latitude of Ravenna (but is 900 miles east of Hobbiton more near Belgrade). Bottom of the map (1,400 miles) is about latitude of Jerusalem.’ Pictured: MS. Tolkien Drawings 132. copyright Tolkien Estate / Williams College Oxford Programme 2018

Happy #TolkienReadingDay to all who celebrate! Please enjoy this map of Middle Earth, annotated by the man himself and including several locations not mentioned in the books:

A favourite! 🏹

So beautiful!

Do you ever feel trapped by your phone, like you're not living a real life? Sometimes, don't you want to throw it away and embrace the natural world?

Well, nobody did this better than the 19th century Romantic painter JMW Turner - Britain's greatest ever artist. 1/8