Grendel’s Mum

BEOWULFbeo

J. R. R. and Christopher Tolkien

Mariner Books, August 2015

 

A thousand years on, the sharpness of Beowulf‘s images still strikes us. Longships cruise amid icy spray. A king stares with fear amid the riches of his hall. Then comes the fiend Grendel stalking across the moors. Tolkien’s translation weds to these visions the rhythm and grandeur of language that rumbles even as it exults, which rolls like the swells of the sea. Continue reading

  • You might also like

    • Seven Centuries Ago…

        You know those things that you anticipate with the sort of energy that should be expended on something far more important? You know the ones – the next George R R Martin book* or the next gods-bedamned series of Sherlock. Clariel by Garth Nix was not one of those … Continue reading