OF WARDROBES AND RINGS
By David Payne
Edinburgh Fringe
‘Last night I dreamt I had written The Lord of the Rings. I guess I was Tolkien in my sleep’. This was a joke I heard at the Edinburgh Fringe this August, but it was not the only mention of the famous author that month.
One very warm evening I attended the new play by David Payne entitled Of Wardrobes and Rings which imagines the final meeting of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books have sold in the millions and the film adaptations have earned billions. It is easy to forget, though, that they began life in the imaginations of two Oxford dons who met together with friends to read and critique one another’s stories in a local pub, The Eagle and Child.
