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Mythmakers Go To War · Mythmakers

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  Welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and creatives
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  brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, Director of the
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  Centre and also a full-time author. So in today's podcast I decided to look at the difference
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  between war as it appears in books and the film versions that we all may have seen. I'll
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  be taking key examples such as The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Narnia Stories, but
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  we'll also be calling in on famous war writers such as Tolstoy and Zachary and the writers
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  from the First World War. So it's a massive subject obviously, we won't cover it all,
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  but we will be taking a few highlights just to think about how we approach war as creatives
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  and in fantasy. I've also written about War myself in both historical fiction and fantasy,
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  and so towards the end I'll be reflecting on the lessons I've learned and my own experiences
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  when writing on this subject. Why did I choose this particular subject today? Well that was
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  because if you are listening to the podcast you'll know that I made my way through the Andy
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  Circus reading of The Lord of the Rings and the funny thing that happens when you listen to
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  something that you're very familiar with when you read it is that you really see the details come
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  to you afresh and that's what was happening for me. And I wanted to have another look at some
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  of the details about war in particular that you find in the text as written by Tolkien,
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  as opposed to the versions you may have seen like the BBC audio version and of course
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  much more famously the Peter Jackson massive trilogy. So here are a couple of things which are
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  different if you've only watched the films and I hope that mentioning some of these will encourage
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  you to go away and have a look at the original source, the book itself. So I think one of the things
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  that you see really clearly in the books is that Tolkien understands his middle-earth conflict
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  as a world war. There are lots of battlefields not just the ones that are featured in chapters.
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  There's rumors of wars happening in many places and reports of skirmishes and defeats.
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  It's been going on for a while. It's not just the events of The Lord of the Rings.
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  And I think that all goes to make the sense of the war much more realistic than you find in many
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  fantasy series that perhaps the person hasn't had the experience of living two world wars which
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  was the experience of Tolkien's generation. The first one he was a combatant famously living
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  through, fortunately, living through the battle of the song, unlike many of his contemporaries.
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  And then again as a father with sons away at war in the second world war when he was writing
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  The Lord of the Rings itself. And you can imagine him tuning in to the BBC News listening to the
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  speeches of Winston Churchill and having a great sense of the theatre of war. And his book
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  manages to convey that same breadth and scope and the number of people involved which is I think
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  really unique for a fantasy series. The other thing which I was reminded of is how his version of
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  the battlefield itself is actually much more realistic than what you might see in what I would call
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  the CGI version. Those of the visuals in the Peter Jackson films are splendid. I'm not knocking
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  them at all. And there were very much at the cutting edge of what is possible in terms of what
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  you can do in CGI. They're also have been simplified for clarity. So if you remember you've got
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  Minnes Tirith, the city rising out of the plain and then not much else. It's as though no human
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  activity happens outside the wars. Clearly we don't experience it is like that. There were roads
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  coming and going. There are farms, there are cottages. As Erwin says about the Westfold
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  Rick cotton tree, you know there's lots more out there. And so when you approach the battle
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  in the book, first of all Gandalf with Pippin go through a defensive dike. So it's not just the
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  the Wars of Minnes Tirith, there's sort of outer defenses where they have a conversation with those
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  who are appearing the war. And then they also pass through the sort of fields and the places where
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  people live. Which must be remembered that usually the first casualties of war are the
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  undefended farms and that kind of place. And when the forces of Sauron approach there is mention
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  of them digging trenches. As soon as you hear that word you of course reminded of the vast
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  battlefields of France in the First World War. And I think it'd be a really good and it would
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  enrich our understanding of that battle of Pellernor field is to put that back in in our
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  imaginations that this is a complicated landscape. It's not just a vast plain where people are
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  moving squares of companies of you know orks and mummacle as if there is no other nothing else there
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  but grass. So definitely a reason for reading the book. And I think it's also to honour Tolkien's
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  own experience. The battlefields of the sun and previous and other encounters of the First World War
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  ended up being in an obliterated landscape but still there were what was left of the woods,
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  what was left of the farmhouses, a ruined landscape but one which he would have known intimately.
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  And I think that gives it a more very similitude, the idea of it feels more real.
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  The other major difference between what you may have seen and what you may read is there are
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  many more characters involved. These cuts were made in order to have a manageable tale to tell
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  and that is what screenwriters often have to do when they're adapting such a big work. That's not the
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  issue here. It's just say why you should go back and read the book. So for example there are some
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  wonderful minor characters in the two towers in the battle for Helm's Deep. It all happens slightly
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  differently for what you've seen on the film. So Ehrmer is there the whole time. He's not sent off
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  like he is in the film. And the person who takes the role of Ehrmer is another famous leader
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  for Rohan called Erkenbrand who gets his own little moment when he arrives with Gandalf. And it
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  gives a sense from a bit much bigger society. It's not just Theddon and his nephew and niece. There's
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  a whole world of Rohan, minor leaders and other people. So you get a more complex society. It's not
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  it's as if the it's not that only Churchill led the clearly. Not only Churchill led the second world
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  but there were lots of other generals running campaigns, lots of other nationalities, lots of famous
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  generals and marshals and what have you. And it's much more complicated, rich, nuanced.
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  And then another section, this is a bit of a list but I hope you're taking them off and if you
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  know the books well you hopefully are adding your own list here. But one thing I think was a great
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  shame not to see in the film versions which you do get in the audio version of BBC is the
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  arrival of the great company. So this may be a complete mystery to you. What I'm talking about
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  here is when Pippin and Gandalf ride off after Pippins looked into the Palantir that's towards the
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  end of the two towers section involving those characters. Arrogons people from the north, the Duna
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  the other people like the Rangers arrive with the two sons of Elrond bearing a message.
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  This replaces that rather odd moment where Elrond just pitches up with a sword. If you think about it
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  some of those things make no sense at all. What's he doing down there? There's a war up north
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  you should be up there Elrond. Anyway I can see why as a storyteller they wanted to simplify it but
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  the great company is it's called of Arrogons own people ride to the rescue which is important in
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  terms of the politics for those of you who are following the details of Tolkien's world of the
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  northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. It also makes the decision to walk the past of the
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  dead which is the message is brought with the great company to suggest that this is remember the
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  past of the dead. Arrogon tells Arrogon it makes it seem a more logical thing to do so rather than
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  three people go off Arrogon, Legolas and Gimli go off on their own you've got a small company,
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  a small band riding through the area where the army of the dead are waiting. I think it's a
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  beautiful passage it's very well written it's very powerful really worth listening on it's
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  listening or watching listening I should not watching listening or reading on it's own because
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  you've got both the perspective of those who are in that company particularly Gimli and how scared
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  he is and that feeling of visceral terror but you also have the local inhabitants glimpses into how
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  they feel about this army of the dead who are riding through it. It's very well written I highly
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  recommend it. And then now going into minister of itself so we're in the events of the return of
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  the king by now with these episodes you've got a couple of really wonderful minor characters
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  one of my favorite is Berregond who is the the person who introduces Pippin to the sort of being
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  a captain of the guard in service to Denathor and he also says if you were a loose end go and find
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  my son Burgl so then you've got this sort of lovely episode where Pippin who has been through all
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  of this goes down finds the few children left in Minnes Tirith and they first of all think he's
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  a child and then they think oh my goodness it's really grown up and then he says actually I'm still
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  a child from my putting to mind people because I have not yet reached 33 in that wonderful way
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  that the hobbits have different age coming of age barriers and this reminds us I think of the
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  the fact that societies aren't just these warrior types but you actually get to meet a child
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  you get to see the war from his perspective you get to see the father who's got his son in the
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  city under siege and I think it's a wonderful humanizing part of the story and then finally in
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  this list of things I think is really makes a reason why you should go back and read the book
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  there is the character of Prince Imrahil now you remember Farramet also another brilliant character
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  when he rides out to defend the retreat from Osgiliath they do in the Peter Jackson film there is
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  the wonderful juxtaposition between Pippin singing his song and Farramet and his people being more
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  of a shot down in the book there's much more strategy it's much less reckless than it appears
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  in the film he goes out to guard the retreat he also denathor prepares a sortie to protect
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  the returning soldiers led by Prince Imrahil and the cavalry so in fact Farramet does stay to the end
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  to protect the retreat of the few who have survived Osgiliath but he is carried in on
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  Prince Imrahil's horse is collected as a fallen soldier from the battlefield so he's not dragged
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  by his foot by his horse through the gate in that rather desperate way that you see in the film
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  and I think the difference here is that there is much more humanity much more strategy much more
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  sense of all of ministerial fighting rather than just a few and Imrahil himself has a fascinating
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  connection to elves and there's a sense of you could imagine another story told from his point of
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  view about Prince Imrahil you know it's great to think of these byways that weren't it explored but
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  he's a wonderful little character to let your imagination loosen okay so another reason for reading
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  the book is as a lesson in how to deal with the complicated subject which is a massive war
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  and I want to again focus again on the battle of Pelenor fields and the way the choreography of
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  the writing is sorted so what you've got here is largely the battle is approached from two sides
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  we get some pre-form material we're airborne going off to try and divert the attack by the
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  corsets but we don't know if he succeeds it's held back as a surprise so we're not told everything
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  and that's really important that is reflected in the way the film handled it as well
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  but mainly we see the battle from inside ministerial from the point of view of Pippin and the
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  people who live there and then the external which is Mary coming with the writers of Rohan
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  and it's very if you go back and have a look at it the changes from one point of view to the other
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  very carefully done so you're not given away that Rohan will arrive in time that's purposely
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  held back so that again you got a surprise and this is very cleverly done it is actually quite a
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  filmic thing that Tolkien was doing he cuts between the two main storylines at this point
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  so as well as the overall view you get from the walls of ministerial where we see the battle
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  arriving and the sense of the siege getting underway those those very famous scenes from the
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  the films you get those in the book too but what you also get emphasised is the experience of the
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  individual in it so you go from the eagle-eyed back to the very local and you've got a character
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  Mike Pippin who is waiting on a steward who is going mad and you've got Mary peeking out from behind
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  Dernhelms cloak and the need for to have these blinkers this sort of narrow focus is understandable
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  because they're part of such a huge conflict that in order to make it feel so you're there you
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  don't see it from a sweeping above eagle-eyed view you see it from one person as who is part of
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  that battle and as a comparison here to Tolstoy it is the first of our little little visits too
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  are the writers and Warren Pieces is actually my favourite war narrative you may think it sounds
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  like a really daunting book it's it's only really long because think of it like a box set there's
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  lots and lots of stories and towards the end of book one we see an account of the battle of
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  Austelitz and when I read it I thought this is amazingly handled it's it's done so that you go
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  from the point of view of Napoleon up on a hill looking at it and you sort of travel from that
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  strategic position down to one of the characters you've been following who's prince
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  Andre who's right in the midst of it trying to be a hero you know he's doing his best
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  and you go down to the point where you see some things which he can't he glimpses images which he
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  can't quite understand so it says for example he could now see distinctly the figure of a red head
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  gunner with his shaco not to rye pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the
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  other so it's you know it's got this absurd element where they're fighting over something which
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  is not a war weapon and it has that sense of the weirdness of war the oddness of things that happen
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  and then he's actually he's wounded and plots winner I'm sorry and it goes into his thoughts
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  what's this am I falling my legs are giving way and he he's lying on the field not understanding
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  what's happened above him there was now only the sky the lofty sky not clear yet still immeasurably
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  lofty with grey clouds creeping softly across it how quiet peaceful and solemn thought prince Andre
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  and he's he's fades out of consciousness and then the next thing you do is you go back to
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  the perspective that we started the battle with with Napoleon doing basically a ride through and
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  he sees this fallen soldier still holding the standard and he said oh what a brave death
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  and then it's discovered that Andre is actually still alive and he's carried off
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  and left in a field hospital with those they don't expect to recover so it's almost as if you're
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  taking different camera angles taking you all the way down from the very big to the individual
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  losing consciousness and back out again I mean killing Tolstoy is writing before cameras but
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  um perhaps filmmakers learnt it from him but it's a masterclass as one would expect from such a
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  classic in how to write war so sometimes there is so much going on there has to be a selection
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  you notice there that Andre fades out of consciousness and then you go to the post
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  battle scene talking in the battle of Polenoffields does it with a song it's his way of listing the dead
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  in this it reminds us of those handful of um extra characters who you only get in the in the book
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  but it reminds us of the cost of war it's not a not just lots of every lots of people died let's
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  move on not just feared and dying or any of you know that it keeps moving sometimes the films move
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  so quickly you never really stop to think what is the cost and this way of pausing to remember the
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  dead by a song reminds me a bit of the passage when I'm going to go to Shakespeare here in Henry
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  the fifth where he reads the name to the dead at the battle of Agingcore there's a moment when
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  everything stops it's like remembrance day and in Tolkien's case it's done beautifully through poetry
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  um and the later um I suppose one thinks of it as a barred uh from Rohan sings this song
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  and ends with this beautiful phrase it just hangs there really bringing home the cost
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  and it says foam died with blood flamed at sunset as beacon mountains burned at evening red fell
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  the dew in ramas echo ramas echo is the area around the battle field basically and the poetry of
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  that allows the space for the sorrow allows the space for the loss and something similar happens
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  um in an earlier part which again is mentioned in the what was shown in the film version where the
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  enemy uses the heads of fallen soldiers as a kind of horrible grizzly um missile in the film
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  version it's just a oak moment you know the shock horror of it but in the book it's dwelt on
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  to allow the grief and pity and Tolkien writes that some recognize the face of someone that he had
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  known who had walked proudly once in arms or tilt the fields or ridden in upon the holiday from
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  the green veils in the hills it's a sense of they're not just heads they're not just sort of
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  you know adding two swords horror they are people and of course as many of you will know
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  Tolkien lost three of his four best friends during the first world war so he absolutely knew this
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  idea of that was someone I once walked proudly alongside in the fields and I think that the
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  weight of that is allowed in those moments in the book which don't make it into the sort of film
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  versions but also looking at it as you know creative Tolstoy leprince Andre lose consciousness
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  I'm pleased to say Tolkien used the same technique but let's talk about now Dolbo who spends much
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  of the battle of the five armies unconscious it's quite funny to think that in the Peter Jackson
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  version of the Hobbit which I must admit isn't my favourite of his films the whole of the last film
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  basically is a long extended version of what in the book is two pages so Bill Bo sees the eagles
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  arriving to help out like the airborne cavalry the eagles cried Bill Bo once more but at that
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  moment a stone hurtling from above smoke heavily on his helm and he fell with the crash and you know
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  more so for a Bilbo this is most of the battle and he comes to to find out who won so you don't
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  if you're thinking of how to handle a battle there is a strategy of telling as much as you need
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  to give a flavour and then checking out and coming back in again the other thing that you can do
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  is focus on characters who are not actually the main ones involved in the battle so in the line
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  which in the wardrobe for example this is obviously writing for much younger children's book
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  but still in the film treatment the battle was huge it was a big set piece of chariots and
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  you know lots of wonderful CGI characters or fighting but we actually go and look at the
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  the book to see what they were using as their source material you then find that actually
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  the battle in line which in wardrobe is very much a last minute thing because we spend most of
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  the time with Lucy and Susan going to save the stone creatures in the white queen's house
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  are waking them up and then bringing them to help Peter and Edmund to a fighting the story
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  and you only get really a page or so of the onslaught as they arrive and then you get
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  some of the key moments in the battle told as a story and when they're healing going around healing
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  and they hear who what Edmund did for example is told like that rather than seeing it first hand
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  so there's a use of the retrospect there and the funny thing is of course as a child is that
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  I was left with the impression of a massive battle and I wasn't all aware of any lack
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  I think that your brain fills in things and runs with it. Prince Caspian also has a battle
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  you remember it starts as a one-on-one combat and then there's some treachery and then there's a
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  short battle skirmish and then it's over again it all happens within very few pages and that
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  reminds me when I was sort of thinking of comparisons to this I'm going to go to another classic
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  it reminded me very much of Thackerys Vanity Fair which is the book in the sort of Victorian novel about
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  the Battle of Waterloo but actually the Battle of Waterloo happens elsewhere it's about the
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  characters around sort of arriving for it and the civilians who were waiting in Brussels and
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  Thackerys quite plainly state I am not a military expert you've read accounts of the battle
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  he's telling his contemporaries so that's not my subject so sometimes what's around a war can
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  be your subject matter as opposed to the complications of the specifics of battle itself the
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  fog of war stuff and this idea of not necessarily sticking with the combatants suggested a nod
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  towards another of the Inklings Charles Williams who was a friend of Lewis and Tolkien and came to
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  Oxford during the war because he was evacuated from London he was one of the Inklings and also one
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  of the fantasy novelists amongst them in fact he was the first imprinting that way and his novel
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  War in heaven published in 1930 has an unusual view of combat so Charles Williams himself
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  suffered from poor health and so during the First World War he was in non-combat roles
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  didn't go out to serving the trenches like Lewis and Tolkien but he also had a very idiosyncratic
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  view he belonged to secret societies and sort of rose accruciation ceremonial groups he's a
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  fascinating man but anyway his book war in heaven is a bit like a kind of Indiana Jones story
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  it's all about the grail being found in a church in a country rectory and the baddies are after
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  it's a bit like thereafter the Ark of the Covenant in the Indiana Jones story but the key conflict
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  is actually one done as prayer is like a prayer battle of the bad guys versus the good guys
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  and this reminds me in the Tolkien world of Gandalf talking about striving in thought with Sauron
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  there's this element of it's your mental resilience that matters and I suppose one of the things
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  Charles Williams is saying there is that there is a role for those who as they also serve
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  who only stand and wait that's a Milton quote but the idea is that you can be a fighter but in a
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  different way anyway the Charles Williams novels are sort of maybe in a quiet taste but I think
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  they're really worth a look at if you're interested in very very different takes on fantasy
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  so we've adopted Charles Williams as an honoree Oxford writer though really he's a London
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  based writer friend of TS Eliot and others but one person who is absolutely an Oxford writer
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  about war a precursor to apocalypse now is Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll because obviously
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  war is not always heroic it's often strange and it's funny and it's absurd and it's horrific
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  and you'll be pleased to know that Alice also has her thoughts on war which come in mainly in
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  Alice through the looking glass where she writes about trying to figure out the rules of battle
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  Alice through the looking glass takes place on a large chest ball so that has the idea of the two
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  opposing armies Alice says I wonder now what the rules of battle are she said to herself as she
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  watched the fight timidly peeping out from her hiding place one rule seems to be that if one night
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  hits the other he knocks him off his horse and if he misses he tumbles off himself and another
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  rule seems to be that they hold their clubs with their arms as if they were punch and judy
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  what a noise they make when they tumble just like a whole set of fire ions falling into the
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  fender how quiet the horses are they let them get on and off just as if they were at tables
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  another rule of battle the Alice have not noticed seem to be that they always fell on their heads
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  and that battle ended with their both falling off in this way side by side when they got up again
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  they shook hands and then the red knight mounted and galloped off he was a glorious victory wasn't it
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  to the white knight as he came panting I don't know Alice said doubtfully I don't want to be anybody's
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  prisoner I want to be queen so Alice has this sort of sense of well what are the rules everyone
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  seems to be falling down and getting up again so it's like a version of war that sees only it's
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  nonsensicalness which is obviously the gift of Alice in Wonderland everything is nonsense in the end
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  so that's a take a lampooning take on battle talking himself I think writes with the belief in
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  the nobility of the cause of war that even the smallest people obits and can achieve who don't
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  have the chance to do the big feat of arms but they can have huge impact I'm not talking here so
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  much Frodo and the ring and Sam but that's obviously absolutely key but examples like pipin saving
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  pharomy and all the consequences that were to have tumbled from that if he hadn't questioned his
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  orders he was told to sort of shut up and put up by denathor but he says no you can't burn your
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  son alive he's not dead so it's those moments of decision where the soldier works out what is the
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  right thing to do that matter because of the centenary of the first world war there are a number
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  of books came out about Tolkien and the Great War John gas one particularly of that title
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  and he compares Tolkien writing about war to the other famous war writers and he says
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  such writers as graves so soon and Owen saw the Great War as the disease but Tolkien saw it
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  merely as a symptom so there isn't the sense of war itself being the evil thing it's the result
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  of other factors and within that the in the small hands can do the big deeds there's another book
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  about the war by a friend of the Oxford Centre for Fantasy Joe Luconte his book
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  a Hobbit of Wardrobe in the Great War points out the difference between the two inplings Lewis
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  and Tolkien and other writers of the interwar era in that they put a value on humanity
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  within the structures that fueled the Great War clearly Tolkien has a very dim view of leaders if
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  they have power too long just take for example Sarah Mann denathor Sarah and himself
• 34:04
  and it's clear that within the war world giving up is a virtue giving up in the sense of giving up
• 34:10
  power so you've got Frodo clearly Bilbo all those who choose not to take the ring
• 34:17
  Galadriel Gandalf Faramir all those who are given a chance who don't take the weapon
• 34:25
  and another kind of giving up this seen as amables by Arwin who gives up eternal life in order
• 34:31
  for love so there are other kinds of giving up which are part of the ongoing struggle of humanity
• 34:39
  and there's a sense of a belief in those decisions a value for them which I think is very different
• 34:46
  from the more cynical take on war by those who who reflected on it in the interwar period perhaps
• 34:54
  some are more associated with it the sort of war poets in particular but I think this also
• 35:04
  brings us to another point which is why we're all writing about war because there is an awful
• 35:09
  poetry of war so why you could read Lord the Rings for a sort of version of the poetry of war
• 35:15
  you clearly it's also important to read the contemporaries who are writing about war
• 35:23
  you must have heard of books by writers such as Robert Graves or Anis Hemingway they're a Britain
• 35:31
  I'm Rick Maria remark from the German side but one book I wanted to particularly mention which I
• 35:37
  found really inspiring was Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis which is a fascinating story of
• 35:44
  or autobiography of experience of the First World War which focuses on the flyers and he has a
• 35:51
  particularly poignant moment about the cruel cost of war where he thinks about that moment when
• 36:01
  he come back from your flying sortie and he says the most self-confident aces began to wonder when
• 36:07
  their turn would come faced by the empty chairs of men you had laughed and joked with at lunch
• 36:13
  and miraculously he was still there until tomorrow there's other moments of pure poetry in his
• 36:21
  writing where he talks about the experience of looking down on the battlefield from the air and
• 36:27
  that separation between the flyer and the people down in literally the mud so these writers all
• 36:35
  link back to the idea that war just as an action sequence is really not that interesting it's about
• 36:41
  the feelings of being in that action that matter and definitely that's something I've always found
• 36:49
  in Tolkien's writing and you can feel that he has filtered his experience through his fantasy
• 37:01
  and one of the aspects which I find particularly unique about him is the sense that war isn't a
• 37:06
  stand alone event but linked to others probably is a commonplace in teaching history that when you do
• 37:15
  causes of the First World War you look back to previous wars causes of the Second World War you
• 37:19
  look back to the way the First World War settled all these interlinks he puts that in there by showing
• 37:25
  us the previous battlefields the dead marshes are a previous battlefield the brown man's there's
• 37:34
  the sense that the present is always haunted by past defeats and short lived victories
• 37:41
  and the short year or so of the time within Lord of the Rings is one of those brief glimpses of
• 37:50
  some sunshine of the eventually is a victory but one has a sense that it's bracketed by what is
• 37:58
  in talking to you the long defeat and that sense of history underlying the war I think adds to its
• 38:05
  realism okay so I mentioned that I've also written about war myself now I'm not never served in the
• 38:13
  armed forces or anything like that so I have no personal experience of actually firing a weapon
• 38:18
  or any of those visceral war experiences but parts of my career have involved understanding war
• 38:27
  so I worked in the foreign office at a time in a department which was called the East Africa
• 38:33
  department when there were ongoing civil wars in Ethiopia and Somalia and still war torn countries
• 38:41
  to this day and sort of was taught how to analyse what was happening and then that's more of a
• 38:48
  political take but then later on I went to work for a development charity Oxfam and part of that was
• 38:56
  the work I was doing there was about how to protect civilians living in war zones or close to war
• 39:01
  zones and particularly civilian to a displaced by war and so that involved some travel to those areas
• 39:12
  so I've always taken more very seriously in extremely aware of the human cost in the great it's not
• 39:19
  a historical thing it's an actual thing that many people today are living through in my own writing
• 39:25
  my first attempt at writing about war was in echoclanticy called Dragonfly which I've got the
• 39:32
  American cover for here is I suppose a more traditional take on the subject I have a war
• 39:39
  lord called Spirigok Spirigok who has a kind of Roman which like a god of war type ethos that he is
• 39:50
  following and there there is a war in a battle told through the main characters but it's very
• 39:59
  important to me that one of the characters her story arc follows what I learnt from Tolkien that
• 40:07
  often the greatest decisive events in a war are about giving up giving up your own chance of life
• 40:16
  giving up the chance of power and that is where often the greatest courage is shown so that's
• 40:23
  what I learnt from Tolkien on that and then I've also written historical fiction I use a number
• 40:29
  of pen names and as Eve Edwards I've written a duet about the first world war told from the point
• 40:38
  of few of teenagers you who are caught up in it it starts with dusk and the second part is dawn
• 40:46
  and in the first world war there is so many sources that you have richness of material I did as
• 40:52
  much research as I could you could devote your whole life to trying to understand that war but I
• 40:59
  did things like I went to battlefields I went to museums I went up in a tiger moth plain to get
• 41:05
  the experience of being a flyer that's what took me to the Cecil Lewis book actually an
• 41:09
  interest in the early aviators I drew on written accounts also family memories because my grandmother
• 41:19
  was a little girl during the war and she lived in London and there was in the first world war an
• 41:24
  aerial attack aviation had got to the point where aircraft could reach the UK which was
• 41:35
  a big psychological shift because the island nation always had felt insulated for more
• 41:41
  for many centuries and now people of London were having bonds dropped on them and my
• 41:48
  grandmother told me a story of seeing a Zeclin and I put her account of this great airship sort of
• 41:55
  moving silently over the rooftops of where she lived into that story and tried to capture her
• 42:01
  perspective looking up a small child looking up at this machine of war going overhead but the
• 42:07
  way of actually handling such a massive war I realised I had to narrow my focus I couldn't
• 42:15
  say everything I would make mistakes for a start so I chose the point of view
• 42:23
  where it was close to what's technically called third person close so it's within the eyes of
• 42:31
  that character and limited to what they understood of the movements on the battlefield so I wasn't
• 42:37
  the toll story he was able to be Napoleon and the Russian commander and you know everybody else
• 42:44
  involved I ever got that skill and so I chose an accountant officer in a specific regiment who
• 42:53
  wrote about his account of going up going over the top at the psalm on the first day my stuck
• 42:59
  as close to his shoulder more or less as I could within what I needed for my own story something else
• 43:06
  which I've learnt from reading about war in fantasy is about looking for new perspectives and I
• 43:16
  wanted to we haven't mentioned much here the experience of women in war talking gives us a warrior
• 43:25
  woman in obviously marvellously in Erwin but most mostly the women are evacuated and taken out
• 43:32
  of the war zone and one writer who I think brilliant and should you know I highly highly recommend her
• 43:41
  is tomorrow appears she writes fantasy setting that sort of dungeons and dragons world of nights and
• 43:48
  that kind of thing castles but she does really interesting angles on that material and one book in
• 43:56
  particular which I return to again and again is this one you know cover isn't my favorite I must
• 44:01
  limit it's the fourth in her series about Kel who is by this time she's become a lady knight
• 44:12
  and tomorrow appears has chosen to make Kel the overseer of a refugee camp the story is constructed
• 44:22
  so that it is of course if she turns out to be in exactly the right place to have a major effect
• 44:27
  on the war but I love the granular detail that she goes into about running a refugee camp it
• 44:36
  bounces the fact about who gets the duty to do the latrines how you protect it what you do with
• 44:42
  civilians who aren't used to bearing arms having to defend themselves because the resources aren't
• 44:48
  strong enough to send enough you know men at arms to come and protect what is seen as an unimportant
• 44:55
  target and I think this gives us ideas people interested in fantasy about where new material
• 45:04
  might come from and writing about war because we have clearly lots and lots of big series like
• 45:12
  Game of Thrones and all those kind of things which do big campaigns and big wars but actually to
• 45:19
  what is the modern experience of war and look for parallels so refugee crisis is clearly
• 45:27
  really important resource wars that will be something I'm afraid for the future so
• 45:38
  we haven't come to the end of war as a subject for fantasy at all I think perhaps we are
• 45:43
  just entering into a new era I think the absolute key lesson in sort of conclusion here is that
• 45:51
  action is actually not the really exciting thing particularly in a prose version of it because
• 45:58
  that can just become overwhelming it's the experience of the person to whom the action is
• 46:06
  their acceleration their fear their absurd thoughts their courage the pumping adrenaline the
• 46:13
  camaraderie yes and it's probably that lasting that is amongst the most important the
• 46:19
  band of brothers and sisters that you go to war with because it tells us that it's about love
• 46:25
  to make us care war narratives like the Lord of the Rings and war and peace have to in the end be
• 46:34
  about the heart from warballs to the world for the ring you have to fight to save what you love
• 46:44
  so that's a little thought about a long way around to to say go away and if you see in the film
• 46:51
  go away and read the book for the absolute detail about war I always have a section where I go to
• 46:58
  where in the world is the best and we've been talking about war and it seems a bit of an odd
• 47:03
  question as to where in the world is the best place to go to war because war by its very nature
• 47:09
  is not a nice experience but where in the world in all the fantasy world is the best experience of war
• 47:18
  and I think perhaps looking here for grandeur um nobility a sense of those around you supporting you
• 47:30
  I wouldn't actually think the best place to go is Lord of the Rings because in fact the main
• 47:36
  characters all tend to get quite isolated during the battles if you think about it that Frodo and
• 47:43
  Sam are very much left on their own doing their effort pigments on his own most of the time
• 47:48
  marries on his own uh arable manages to keep give me a legolas and he's doodied with him but
• 47:55
  is it's quite lucky in that way so I wouldn't think that actually the experience of war in the
• 48:00
  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
• 48:08
  at war anywhere I would choose to do it in the world of Harry Potter because if you're a wizard it
• 48:16
  doesn't matter if you're good at you know how strong you are or I think like that your magic is
• 48:22
  what you're fighting with and also you're surrounded by your friends in your school in the case
• 48:28
  of the Hogwarts and it's a very clear battle between good and evil so I think if I had to choose
• 48:36
  a place to be parched with battle I would be somewhere in I don't know puffle puff helping out
• 48:43
  in the final battle at Hogwarts that's where I would go so thank you very much for listening to
• 48:49
  this podcast we've got some more episodes coming up soon with special guests so do check back in
• 48:54
  and see what we are doing but until next time goodbye