Tom Holland in The Times (3/1/2015) made a topical link with the theft of treasure story in Beowulf and J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The great inventor of dungeons and dragons and patron saint of nerds and geeks the world over enjoyed a respectable academic reputation writing about Beowulf, though whether he would have approved of the final part – no, make that any part – of Peter Jackson’s interminable cinematic interpretation of The Hobbit is another question.
In 1920 Tolkien was appointed to the post of Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds. In 1925 he was appointed to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Tolkien’s time in Leeds is the subject of an article in the Guardian by Leeds-based journalist Martin Hickes. Tolkien didn’t write The Hobbit whilst he was living in Headingley. Maybe this takes the Medieval Section into a new area of Yorkshire-focused Medieval studies, in which the county and its Medieval history serve as inspiration for works of fiction.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 