J.R.R. Tolkien 1962 BBC Interview - Colorized (subtitles) 

Something millions of people have enjoyed (and some even studied) - something people are debating and speculating about to this very day. A shrug.

@@dagmichaelbecause if you know you know, he was basically getting asked why are you good.

Yeah, the language also. "Apotheosis", a few years back I wouldn't have any idea what that meant, though to be fair, I'm not a native speaker.

@@fgdj2000I had to look up quite a few words used in this interview as a non native speaker and I’m sad I don’t see this kind of vocabulary in the modern English language tbh

That's only because you are comparing it to the mainstream. This was not a mainstream interview. Hardly anyone watched it except hardcore Tolkien and literature fans.

⁠@@wowalamoiz9489 what are you talking about. The BBC is about as mainstream as you can get, ESPECIALLY in the 60s when there was only 2 TV channels… lol

Probably, because it's incomplete, and they're shafting us.

=! ?

Tools, are for small acculumations. Once, one name is becoming distinguished: to withdraw, into heaven, is the way of Heaven.

You have 'challenge: Fu'

Doesn't understand a lot of things.

thank you for clarifying this! I was wondering what the Torah had to do with it (which of course Tolkien's wide corpus does, beginning with a creation story (Silmarillion), but that wasn't what he said here.

From Wikipedia: “Tolkien presents The Lord of the Rings within a fictional frame story where he is not the original author, but merely the translator of part of an ancient document, the Red Book of Westmarch.[7] That book is modelled on the real Red Book of Hergest, which similarly presents an older mythology. Various details of the frame story appear in the Prologue, its "Note on Shire Records", and in the Appendices, notably Appendix F. In this frame story, the Red Book is the purported source of Tolkien's other works relating to Middle-earth: The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.[8]” “J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.”

He wasn't the author, he was the translator.

@@igor20igor proof?

@@igor20igor he had been writing the silmarillion since the 1920s.

@@thatguy5148 It's the framing of the story, like how Cressida Cowell frames the How to Train your Dragon books as being Hiccup's personal journals which she just happened to find. He himself wrote that he 'translated' the Red Book.

It seems that way, but he was asking incisive and informed questions that pried some very thoughtful answers from Tolkien, who was clearly up for the challenge.

Par for the course.

​@@hemslonnigumThat too.

What an incredibly unusual take to walk away from this video with. Leave it to a “Karen” to be offended by two intellectuals having a casual conversation, in which neither of them are offended by the other. Literally nothing he said was rude or “hostile”, I could only imagine interacting with you: someone says “oh, hi there! It’s nice to see you!” and you absolutely lose it, “how dare you be so rude to me! You’re being hostile and mean!” Would you like to speak to that interviewer’s manager? Really living up to that garbage “Karen” stereotype, I see. 👍

Yes, it seems so sad that he was so confrontational in his tone. You could see Tolkien waiting for him to stop doing so.

@@MattHoyle1not true at all. Modern day interviews sadly have become like games . Not to be taken serious. Back then interviews were more personal. It’s how we learned of the authors . Today in an interview we would never get a answer like ,”I don’t believe in absolute evil but I believe in absolute good.”

I actually like the questions in this one. If this was a modern interviewer it would be filled with inane questions like “Where did you spend your first paycheck?”.

I think that some of the statements the interviewer makes come across as a bit condescending (partly because of his tone), as if he tries to establish a hierarchy in the conversation, and he makes no effort to conceal it by quicker speech or by shuffling it into a subclause, like modern interviewers often seem to do when they try to do the same thing. The whole interview is also much less hurried than the interviews we might think of today. Perhaps that's part of the reason why it comes across as more rude. It also seems to ease up quite a bit from 0:47 onwards imho.