BBC to broadcast lost Tolkien recordings

[frigidmagi]

bbc

Recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien thought to have been lost have been rediscovered in the BBC archives and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20.00 on Saturday 6 August.


The recordings survive from an interview Tolkien gave for Tolkien in Oxford, a documentary first broadcast on BBC 2 on 30 March 1968.

Only a small selection was used in the final programme. The rest of the material was thought to have been lost until its producer, Leslie Megahey, found it on a video tape.

Having shared the precious find with Tolkien scholar Dr Stuart Lee, the search began to find the original tape in the BBC archives.

Only a small number of people have seen snippets from the unused material, including attendees of a 2014 symposium at Merton College, Oxford and the Tolkien Society’s 2015 Annual Dinner in Arundel.

“Tolkien: The Lost Recordings” is narrated by Joss Ackland and will air on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 6 August.

BBC press release

Joss Ackland narrates a search through the BBC archives for unheard gems from J. R. R. Tolkien, as Oxford academic Dr Stuart Lee, discovers the unheard offcuts from an interview given by the author.

Tolkien gave the interview for a BBC film in 1968, but only a tiny part of it was used in the broadcast programme. It was one of only a handful of recorded interviews he ever gave, and was also to be his last. Dr Lee’s search for the unbroadcast rushes takes him to the depths of the BBC film archives and back to the making of the original film, Tolkien, in Oxford.

For the director, Leslie Megahey, only 23 at the time, this was his first film, and the one that launched a prestigious career. The programme reunites him with three others: researcher Patrick O’Sullivan, Tolkien fan Michael Hebbert, and critic Valentine Cunningham, who describes how he was brought in to be the voice of dissent – challenging the burgeoning Tolkien cult spreading from America.

What emerges is a picture of a playful academic whose fiction was little respected by adults at the time and looked down on as a lesser form of literature. But he is robustly defended by Professor Tom Shippey and remembered fondly by his colleague Dr Roger Highfield.

Lee presents the results of his search through the archives to Dr Dimitra Fimi, who considers any new words from Tolkien’s mouth as “gold”, while for Lee, the real dragon’s hoard is the privilege of hearing Tolkien in relaxed mode reflecting on his life as never before.

Whoooooo!

[Norseman]

Frabulous day! And only goes to show how good it is that we still have archives with proper magnetic media, imagine if this had been stored on a DVD.

[Batman]

It wouldn't exist because DVDs hadn't been invented yet?

[Norseman]

It wouldn't exist because DVDs hadn't been invented yet?

:-p You know what I mean. Magnetic tape is amazingly durable.