Mythmakers Go To War

Welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, Director of the Centre and also a full-time author. So in today's podcast I decided to look at the difference between war as it appears in books and the film versions that we all may have seen. I'll be taking key examples such as The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Narnia Stories, but we'll also be calling in on famous war writers such as Tolstoy and Zachary and the writers from the First World War. So it's a massive subject obviously, we won't cover it all, but we will be taking a few highlights just to think about how we approach war as creatives and in fantasy. I've also written about War myself in both historical fiction and fantasy, and so towards the end I'll be reflecting on the lessons I've learned and my own experiences when writing on this subject. Why did I choose this particular subject today? Well that was because if you are listening to the podcast you'll know that I made my way through the Andy Circus reading of The Lord of the Rings and the funny thing that happens when you listen to something that you're very familiar with when you read it is that you really see the details come to you afresh and that's what was happening for me. And I wanted to have another look at some of the details about war in particular that you find in the text as written by Tolkien, as opposed to the versions you may have seen like the BBC audio version and of course much more famously the Peter Jackson massive trilogy. So here are a couple of things which are different if you've only watched the films and I hope that mentioning some of these will encourage you to go away and have a look at the original source, the book itself. So I think one of the things that you see really clearly in the books is that Tolkien understands his middle-earth conflict as a world war. There are lots of battlefields not just the ones that are featured in chapters. There's rumors of wars happening in many places and reports of skirmishes and defeats. It's been going on for a while. It's not just the events of The Lord of the Rings. And I think that all goes to make the sense of the war much more realistic than you find in many fantasy series that perhaps the person hasn't had the experience of living two world wars which was the experience of Tolkien's generation. The first one he was a combatant famously living through, fortunately, living through the battle of the song, unlike many of his contemporaries. And then again as a father with sons away at war in the second world war when he was writing The Lord of the Rings itself. And you can imagine him tuning in to the BBC News listening to the speeches of Winston Churchill and having a great sense of the theatre of war. And his book manages to convey that same breadth and scope and the number of people involved which is I think really unique for a fantasy series. The other thing which I was reminded of is how his version of the battlefield itself is actually much more realistic than what you might see in what I would call the CGI version. Those of the visuals in the Peter Jackson films are splendid. I'm not knocking them at all. And there were very much at the cutting edge of what is possible in terms of what you can do in CGI. They're also have been simplified for clarity. So if you remember you've got Minnes Tirith, the city rising out of the plain and then not much else. It's as though no human activity happens outside the wars. Clearly we don't experience it is like that. There were roads coming and going. There are farms, there are cottages. As Erwin says about the Westfold Rick cotton tree, you know there's lots more out there. And so when you approach the battle in the book, first of all Gandalf with Pippin go through a defensive dike. So it's not just the the Wars of Minnes Tirith, there's sort of outer defenses where they have a conversation with those who are appearing the war. And then they also pass through the sort of fields and the places where people live. Which must be remembered that usually the first casualties of war are the undefended farms and that kind of place. And when the forces of Sauron approach there is mention of them digging trenches. As soon as you hear that word you of course reminded of the vast battlefields of France in the First World War. And I think it'd be a really good and it would enrich our understanding of that battle of Pellernor field is to put that back in in our imaginations that this is a complicated landscape. It's not just a vast plain where people are moving squares of companies of you know orks and mummacle as if there is no other nothing else there but grass. So definitely a reason for reading the book. And I think it's also to honour Tolkien's own experience. The battlefields of the sun and previous and other encounters of the First World War ended up being in an obliterated landscape but still there were what was left of the woods, what was left of the farmhouses, a ruined landscape but one which he would have known intimately. And I think that gives it a more very similitude, the idea of it feels more real. The other major difference between what you may have seen and what you may read is there are many more characters involved. These cuts were made in order to have a manageable tale to tell and that is what screenwriters often have to do when they're adapting such a big work. That's not the issue here. It's just say why you should go back and read the book. So for example there are some wonderful minor characters in the two towers in the battle for Helm's Deep. It all happens slightly differently for what you've seen on the film. So Ehrmer is there the whole time. He's not sent off like he is in the film. And the person who takes the role of Ehrmer is another famous leader for Rohan called Erkenbrand who gets his own little moment when he arrives with Gandalf. And it gives a sense from a bit much bigger society. It's not just Theddon and his nephew and niece. There's a whole world of Rohan, minor leaders and other people. So you get a more complex society. It's not it's as if the it's not that only Churchill led the clearly. Not only Churchill led the second world but there were lots of other generals running campaigns, lots of other nationalities, lots of famous generals and marshals and what have you. And it's much more complicated, rich, nuanced. And then another section, this is a bit of a list but I hope you're taking them off and if you know the books well you hopefully are adding your own list here. But one thing I think was a great shame not to see in the film versions which you do get in the audio version of BBC is the arrival of the great company. So this may be a complete mystery to you. What I'm talking about here is when Pippin and Gandalf ride off after Pippins looked into the Palantir that's towards the end of the two towers section involving those characters. Arrogons people from the north, the Duna the other people like the Rangers arrive with the two sons of Elrond bearing a message. This replaces that rather odd moment where Elrond just pitches up with a sword. If you think about it some of those things make no sense at all. What's he doing down there? There's a war up north you should be up there Elrond. Anyway I can see why as a storyteller they wanted to simplify it but the great company is it's called of Arrogons own people ride to the rescue which is important in terms of the politics for those of you who are following the details of Tolkien's world of the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. It also makes the decision to walk the past of the dead which is the message is brought with the great company to suggest that this is remember the past of the dead. Arrogon tells Arrogon it makes it seem a more logical thing to do so rather than three people go off Arrogon, Legolas and Gimli go off on their own you've got a small company, a small band riding through the area where the army of the dead are waiting. I think it's a beautiful passage it's very well written it's very powerful really worth listening on it's listening or watching listening I should not watching listening or reading on it's own because you've got both the perspective of those who are in that company particularly Gimli and how scared he is and that feeling of visceral terror but you also have the local inhabitants glimpses into how they feel about this army of the dead who are riding through it. It's very well written I highly recommend it. And then now going into minister of itself so we're in the events of the return of the king by now with these episodes you've got a couple of really wonderful minor characters one of my favorite is Berregond who is the the person who introduces Pippin to the sort of being a captain of the guard in service to Denathor and he also says if you were a loose end go and find my son Burgl so then you've got this sort of lovely episode where Pippin who has been through all of this goes down finds the few children left in Minnes Tirith and they first of all think he's a child and then they think oh my goodness it's really grown up and then he says actually I'm still a child from my putting to mind people because I have not yet reached 33 in that wonderful way that the hobbits have different age coming of age barriers and this reminds us I think of the the fact that societies aren't just these warrior types but you actually get to meet a child you get to see the war from his perspective you get to see the father who's got his son in the city under siege and I think it's a wonderful humanizing part of the story and then finally in this list of things I think is really makes a reason why you should go back and read the book there is the character of Prince Imrahil now you remember Farramet also another brilliant character when he rides out to defend the retreat from Osgiliath they do in the Peter Jackson film there is the wonderful juxtaposition between Pippin singing his song and Farramet and his people being more of a shot down in the book there's much more strategy it's much less reckless than it appears in the film he goes out to guard the retreat he also denathor prepares a sortie to protect the returning soldiers led by Prince Imrahil and the cavalry so in fact Farramet does stay to the end to protect the retreat of the few who have survived Osgiliath but he is carried in on Prince Imrahil's horse is collected as a fallen soldier from the battlefield so he's not dragged by his foot by his horse through the gate in that rather desperate way that you see in the film and I think the difference here is that there is much more humanity much more strategy much more sense of all of ministerial fighting rather than just a few and Imrahil himself has a fascinating connection to elves and there's a sense of you could imagine another story told from his point of view about Prince Imrahil you know it's great to think of these byways that weren't it explored but he's a wonderful little character to let your imagination loosen okay so another reason for reading the book is as a lesson in how to deal with the complicated subject which is a massive war and I want to again focus again on the battle of Pelenor fields and the way the choreography of the writing is sorted so what you've got here is largely the battle is approached from two sides we get some pre-form material we're airborne going off to try and divert the attack by the corsets but we don't know if he succeeds it's held back as a surprise so we're not told everything and that's really important that is reflected in the way the film handled it as well but mainly we see the battle from inside ministerial from the point of view of Pippin and the people who live there and then the external which is Mary coming with the writers of Rohan and it's very if you go back and have a look at it the changes from one point of view to the other very carefully done so you're not given away that Rohan will arrive in time that's purposely held back so that again you got a surprise and this is very cleverly done it is actually quite a filmic thing that Tolkien was doing he cuts between the two main storylines at this point so as well as the overall view you get from the walls of ministerial where we see the battle arriving and the sense of the siege getting underway those those very famous scenes from the the films you get those in the book too but what you also get emphasised is the experience of the individual in it so you go from the eagle-eyed back to the very local and you've got a character Mike Pippin who is waiting on a steward who is going mad and you've got Mary peeking out from behind Dernhelms cloak and the need for to have these blinkers this sort of narrow focus is understandable because they're part of such a huge conflict that in order to make it feel so you're there you don't see it from a sweeping above eagle-eyed view you see it from one person as who is part of that battle and as a comparison here to Tolstoy it is the first of our little little visits too are the writers and Warren Pieces is actually my favourite war narrative you may think it sounds like a really daunting book it's it's only really long because think of it like a box set there's lots and lots of stories and towards the end of book one we see an account of the battle of Austelitz and when I read it I thought this is amazingly handled it's it's done so that you go from the point of view of Napoleon up on a hill looking at it and you sort of travel from that strategic position down to one of the characters you've been following who's prince Andre who's right in the midst of it trying to be a hero you know he's doing his best and you go down to the point where you see some things which he can't he glimpses images which he can't quite understand so it says for example he could now see distinctly the figure of a red head gunner with his shaco not to rye pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other so it's you know it's got this absurd element where they're fighting over something which is not a war weapon and it has that sense of the weirdness of war the oddness of things that happen and then he's actually he's wounded and plots winner I'm sorry and it goes into his thoughts what's this am I falling my legs are giving way and he he's lying on the field not understanding what's happened above him there was now only the sky the lofty sky not clear yet still immeasurably lofty with grey clouds creeping softly across it how quiet peaceful and solemn thought prince Andre and he's he's fades out of consciousness and then the next thing you do is you go back to the perspective that we started the battle with with Napoleon doing basically a ride through and he sees this fallen soldier still holding the standard and he said oh what a brave death and then it's discovered that Andre is actually still alive and he's carried off and left in a field hospital with those they don't expect to recover so it's almost as if you're taking different camera angles taking you all the way down from the very big to the individual losing consciousness and back out again I mean killing Tolstoy is writing before cameras but um perhaps filmmakers learnt it from him but it's a masterclass as one would expect from such a classic in how to write war so sometimes there is so much going on there has to be a selection you notice there that Andre fades out of consciousness and then you go to the post battle scene talking in the battle of Polenoffields does it with a song it's his way of listing the dead in this it reminds us of those handful of um extra characters who you only get in the in the book but it reminds us of the cost of war it's not a not just lots of every lots of people died let's move on not just feared and dying or any of you know that it keeps moving sometimes the films move so quickly you never really stop to think what is the cost and this way of pausing to remember the dead by a song reminds me a bit of the passage when I'm going to go to Shakespeare here in Henry the fifth where he reads the name to the dead at the battle of Agingcore there's a moment when everything stops it's like remembrance day and in Tolkien's case it's done beautifully through poetry um and the later um I suppose one thinks of it as a barred uh from Rohan sings this song and ends with this beautiful phrase it just hangs there really bringing home the cost and it says foam died with blood flamed at sunset as beacon mountains burned at evening red fell the dew in ramas echo ramas echo is the area around the battle field basically and the poetry of that allows the space for the sorrow allows the space for the loss and something similar happens um in an earlier part which again is mentioned in the what was shown in the film version where the enemy uses the heads of fallen soldiers as a kind of horrible grizzly um missile in the film version it's just a oak moment you know the shock horror of it but in the book it's dwelt on to allow the grief and pity and Tolkien writes that some recognize the face of someone that he had known who had walked proudly once in arms or tilt the fields or ridden in upon the holiday from the green veils in the hills it's a sense of they're not just heads they're not just sort of you know adding two swords horror they are people and of course as many of you will know Tolkien lost three of his four best friends during the first world war so he absolutely knew this idea of that was someone I once walked proudly alongside in the fields and I think that the weight of that is allowed in those moments in the book which don't make it into the sort of film versions but also looking at it as you know creative Tolstoy leprince Andre lose consciousness I'm pleased to say Tolkien used the same technique but let's talk about now Dolbo who spends much of the battle of the five armies unconscious it's quite funny to think that in the Peter Jackson version of the Hobbit which I must admit isn't my favourite of his films the whole of the last film basically is a long extended version of what in the book is two pages so Bill Bo sees the eagles arriving to help out like the airborne cavalry the eagles cried Bill Bo once more but at that moment a stone hurtling from above smoke heavily on his helm and he fell with the crash and you know more so for a Bilbo this is most of the battle and he comes to to find out who won so you don't if you're thinking of how to handle a battle there is a strategy of telling as much as you need to give a flavour and then checking out and coming back in again the other thing that you can do is focus on characters who are not actually the main ones involved in the battle so in the line which in the wardrobe for example this is obviously writing for much younger children's book but still in the film treatment the battle was huge it was a big set piece of chariots and you know lots of wonderful CGI characters or fighting but we actually go and look at the the book to see what they were using as their source material you then find that actually the battle in line which in wardrobe is very much a last minute thing because we spend most of the time with Lucy and Susan going to save the stone creatures in the white queen's house are waking them up and then bringing them to help Peter and Edmund to a fighting the story and you only get really a page or so of the onslaught as they arrive and then you get some of the key moments in the battle told as a story and when they're healing going around healing and they hear who what Edmund did for example is told like that rather than seeing it first hand so there's a use of the retrospect there and the funny thing is of course as a child is that I was left with the impression of a massive battle and I wasn't all aware of any lack I think that your brain fills in things and runs with it. Prince Caspian also has a battle you remember it starts as a one-on-one combat and then there's some treachery and then there's a short battle skirmish and then it's over again it all happens within very few pages and that reminds me when I was sort of thinking of comparisons to this I'm going to go to another classic it reminded me very much of Thackerys Vanity Fair which is the book in the sort of Victorian novel about the Battle of Waterloo but actually the Battle of Waterloo happens elsewhere it's about the characters around sort of arriving for it and the civilians who were waiting in Brussels and Thackerys quite plainly state I am not a military expert you've read accounts of the battle he's telling his contemporaries so that's not my subject so sometimes what's around a war can be your subject matter as opposed to the complications of the specifics of battle itself the fog of war stuff and this idea of not necessarily sticking with the combatants suggested a nod towards another of the Inklings Charles Williams who was a friend of Lewis and Tolkien and came to Oxford during the war because he was evacuated from London he was one of the Inklings and also one of the fantasy novelists amongst them in fact he was the first imprinting that way and his novel War in heaven published in 1930 has an unusual view of combat so Charles Williams himself suffered from poor health and so during the First World War he was in non-combat roles didn't go out to serving the trenches like Lewis and Tolkien but he also had a very idiosyncratic view he belonged to secret societies and sort of rose accruciation ceremonial groups he's a fascinating man but anyway his book war in heaven is a bit like a kind of Indiana Jones story it's all about the grail being found in a church in a country rectory and the baddies are after it's a bit like thereafter the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones story but the key conflict is actually one done as prayer is like a prayer battle of the bad guys versus the good guys and this reminds me in the Tolkien world of Gandalf talking about striving in thought with Sauron there's this element of it's your mental resilience that matters and I suppose one of the things Charles Williams is saying there is that there is a role for those who as they also serve who only stand and wait that's a Milton quote but the idea is that you can be a fighter but in a different way anyway the Charles Williams novels are sort of maybe in a quiet taste but I think they're really worth a look at if you're interested in very very different takes on fantasy so we've adopted Charles Williams as an honoree Oxford writer though really he's a London based writer friend of TS Eliot and others but one person who is absolutely an Oxford writer about war a precursor to apocalypse now is Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll because obviously war is not always heroic it's often strange and it's funny and it's absurd and it's horrific and you'll be pleased to know that Alice also has her thoughts on war which come in mainly in Alice through the looking glass where she writes about trying to figure out the rules of battle Alice through the looking glass takes place on a large chest ball so that has the idea of the two opposing armies Alice says I wonder now what the rules of battle are she said to herself as she watched the fight timidly peeping out from her hiding place one rule seems to be that if one night hits the other he knocks him off his horse and if he misses he tumbles off himself and another rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms as if they were punch and judy what a noise they make when they tumble just like a whole set of fire ions falling into the fender how quiet the horses are they let them get on and off just as if they were at tables another rule of battle the Alice have not noticed seem to be that they always fell on their heads and that battle ended with their both falling off in this way side by side when they got up again they shook hands and then the red knight mounted and galloped off he was a glorious victory wasn't it to the white knight as he came panting I don't know Alice said doubtfully I don't want to be anybody's prisoner I want to be queen so Alice has this sort of sense of well what are the rules everyone seems to be falling down and getting up again so it's like a version of war that sees only it's nonsensicalness which is obviously the gift of Alice in Wonderland everything is nonsense in the end so that's a take a lampooning take on battle talking himself I think writes with the belief in the nobility of the cause of war that even the smallest people obits and can achieve who don't have the chance to do the big feat of arms but they can have huge impact I'm not talking here so much Frodo and the ring and Sam but that's obviously absolutely key but examples like pipin saving pharomy and all the consequences that were to have tumbled from that if he hadn't questioned his orders he was told to sort of shut up and put up by denathor but he says no you can't burn your son alive he's not dead so it's those moments of decision where the soldier works out what is the right thing to do that matter because of the centenary of the first world war there are a number of books came out about Tolkien and the Great War John gas one particularly of that title and he compares Tolkien writing about war to the other famous war writers and he says such writers as graves so soon and Owen saw the Great War as the disease but Tolkien saw it merely as a symptom so there isn't the sense of war itself being the evil thing it's the result of other factors and within that the in the small hands can do the big deeds there's another book about the war by a friend of the Oxford Centre for Fantasy Joe Luconte his book a Hobbit of Wardrobe in the Great War points out the difference between the two inplings Lewis and Tolkien and other writers of the interwar era in that they put a value on humanity within the structures that fueled the Great War clearly Tolkien has a very dim view of leaders if they have power too long just take for example Sarah Mann denathor Sarah and himself and it's clear that within the war world giving up is a virtue giving up in the sense of giving up power so you've got Frodo clearly Bilbo all those who choose not to take the ring Galadriel Gandalf Faramir all those who are given a chance who don't take the weapon and another kind of giving up this seen as amables by Arwin who gives up eternal life in order for love so there are other kinds of giving up which are part of the ongoing struggle of humanity and there's a sense of a belief in those decisions a value for them which I think is very different from the more cynical take on war by those who who reflected on it in the interwar period perhaps some are more associated with it the sort of war poets in particular but I think this also brings us to another point which is why we're all writing about war because there is an awful poetry of war so why you could read Lord the Rings for a sort of version of the poetry of war you clearly it's also important to read the contemporaries who are writing about war you must have heard of books by writers such as Robert Graves or Anis Hemingway they're a Britain I'm Rick Maria remark from the German side but one book I wanted to particularly mention which I found really inspiring was Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis which is a fascinating story of or autobiography of experience of the First World War which focuses on the flyers and he has a particularly poignant moment about the cruel cost of war where he thinks about that moment when he come back from your flying sortie and he says the most self-confident aces began to wonder when their turn would come faced by the empty chairs of men you had laughed and joked with at lunch and miraculously he was still there until tomorrow there's other moments of pure poetry in his writing where he talks about the experience of looking down on the battlefield from the air and that separation between the flyer and the people down in literally the mud so these writers all link back to the idea that war just as an action sequence is really not that interesting it's about the feelings of being in that action that matter and definitely that's something I've always found in Tolkien's writing and you can feel that he has filtered his experience through his fantasy and one of the aspects which I find particularly unique about him is the sense that war isn't a stand alone event but linked to others probably is a commonplace in teaching history that when you do causes of the First World War you look back to previous wars causes of the Second World War you look back to the way the First World War settled all these interlinks he puts that in there by showing us the previous battlefields the dead marshes are a previous battlefield the brown man's there's the sense that the present is always haunted by past defeats and short lived victories and the short year or so of the time within Lord of the Rings is one of those brief glimpses of some sunshine of the eventually is a victory but one has a sense that it's bracketed by what is in talking to you the long defeat and that sense of history underlying the war I think adds to its realism okay so I mentioned that I've also written about war myself now I'm not never served in the armed forces or anything like that so I have no personal experience of actually firing a weapon or any of those visceral war experiences but parts of my career have involved understanding war so I worked in the foreign office at a time in a department which was called the East Africa department when there were ongoing civil wars in Ethiopia and Somalia and still war torn countries to this day and sort of was taught how to analyse what was happening and then that's more of a political take but then later on I went to work for a development charity Oxfam and part of that was the work I was doing there was about how to protect civilians living in war zones or close to war zones and particularly civilian to a displaced by war and so that involved some travel to those areas so I've always taken more very seriously in extremely aware of the human cost in the great it's not a historical thing it's an actual thing that many people today are living through in my own writing my first attempt at writing about war was in echoclanticy called Dragonfly which I've got the American cover for here is I suppose a more traditional take on the subject I have a war lord called Spirigok Spirigok who has a kind of Roman which like a god of war type ethos that he is following and there there is a war in a battle told through the main characters but it's very important to me that one of the characters her story arc follows what I learnt from Tolkien that often the greatest decisive events in a war are about giving up giving up your own chance of life giving up the chance of power and that is where often the greatest courage is shown so that's what I learnt from Tolkien on that and then I've also written historical fiction I use a number of pen names and as Eve Edwards I've written a duet about the first world war told from the point of few of teenagers you who are caught up in it it starts with dusk and the second part is dawn and in the first world war there is so many sources that you have richness of material I did as much research as I could you could devote your whole life to trying to understand that war but I did things like I went to battlefields I went to museums I went up in a tiger moth plain to get the experience of being a flyer that's what took me to the Cecil Lewis book actually an interest in the early aviators I drew on written accounts also family memories because my grandmother was a little girl during the war and she lived in London and there was in the first world war an aerial attack aviation had got to the point where aircraft could reach the UK which was a big psychological shift because the island nation always had felt insulated for more for many centuries and now people of London were having bonds dropped on them and my grandmother told me a story of seeing a Zeclin and I put her account of this great airship sort of moving silently over the rooftops of where she lived into that story and tried to capture her perspective looking up a small child looking up at this machine of war going overhead but the way of actually handling such a massive war I realised I had to narrow my focus I couldn't say everything I would make mistakes for a start so I chose the point of view where it was close to what's technically called third person close so it's within the eyes of that character and limited to what they understood of the movements on the battlefield so I wasn't the toll story he was able to be Napoleon and the Russian commander and you know everybody else involved I ever got that skill and so I chose an accountant officer in a specific regiment who wrote about his account of going up going over the top at the psalm on the first day my stuck as close to his shoulder more or less as I could within what I needed for my own story something else which I've learnt from reading about war in fantasy is about looking for new perspectives and I wanted to we haven't mentioned much here the experience of women in war talking gives us a warrior woman in obviously marvellously in Erwin but most mostly the women are evacuated and taken out of the war zone and one writer who I think brilliant and should you know I highly highly recommend her is tomorrow appears she writes fantasy setting that sort of dungeons and dragons world of nights and that kind of thing castles but she does really interesting angles on that material and one book in particular which I return to again and again is this one you know cover isn't my favorite I must limit it's the fourth in her series about Kel who is by this time she's become a lady knight and tomorrow appears has chosen to make Kel the overseer of a refugee camp the story is constructed so that it is of course if she turns out to be in exactly the right place to have a major effect on the war but I love the granular detail that she goes into about running a refugee camp it bounces the fact about who gets the duty to do the latrines how you protect it what you do with civilians who aren't used to bearing arms having to defend themselves because the resources aren't strong enough to send enough you know men at arms to come and protect what is seen as an unimportant target and I think this gives us ideas people interested in fantasy about where new material might come from and writing about war because we have clearly lots and lots of big series like Game of Thrones and all those kind of things which do big campaigns and big wars but actually to what is the modern experience of war and look for parallels so refugee crisis is clearly really important resource wars that will be something I'm afraid for the future so we haven't come to the end of war as a subject for fantasy at all I think perhaps we are just entering into a new era I think the absolute key lesson in sort of conclusion here is that action is actually not the really exciting thing particularly in a prose version of it because that can just become overwhelming it's the experience of the person to whom the action is their acceleration their fear their absurd thoughts their courage the pumping adrenaline the camaraderie yes and it's probably that lasting that is amongst the most important the band of brothers and sisters that you go to war with because it tells us that it's about love to make us care war narratives like the Lord of the Rings and war and peace have to in the end be about the heart from warballs to the world for the ring you have to fight to save what you love so that's a little thought about a long way around to to say go away and if you see in the film go away and read the book for the absolute detail about war I always have a section where I go to where in the world is the best and we've been talking about war and it seems a bit of an odd question as to where in the world is the best place to go to war because war by its very nature is not a nice experience but where in the world in all the fantasy world is the best experience of war and I think perhaps looking here for grandeur um nobility a sense of those around you supporting you I wouldn't actually think the best place to go is Lord of the Rings because in fact the main characters all tend to get quite isolated during the battles if you think about it that Frodo and Sam are very much left on their own doing their effort pigments on his own most of the time marries on his own uh arable manages to keep give me a legolas and he's doodied with him but is it's quite lucky in that way so I wouldn't think that actually the experience of war in the Lord of the Rings is that um I think it's one of the more difficult ones so I think if I had to be at war anywhere I would choose to do it in the world of Harry Potter because if you're a wizard it doesn't matter if you're good at you know how strong you are or I think like that your magic is what you're fighting with and also you're surrounded by your friends in your school in the case of the Hogwarts and it's a very clear battle between good and evil so I think if I had to choose a place to be parched with battle I would be somewhere in I don't know puffle puff helping out in the final battle at Hogwarts that's where I would go so thank you very much for listening to this podcast we've got some more episodes coming up soon with special guests so do check back in and see what we are doing but until next time goodbye