The Shire Shelters the Comandante

And hobbits suggest how to fight our Mordor

Hobbiton - somewhere in deepest Powys. Photo by the Comandante.

I have begun writing a new novel, a madcap late-life project that is a strange mixture of mediaeval romance and post-apocalyptic fantasy, at an artists’ residency in the splendid village above, not far from Cader Idris, where King Arthur once held court, it is said. For several reasons, some personal, I am happier than I have been in many a long year, and despite reaching a landmark age hardly a week ago—the Biblical threescore and ten—I feel that my life is in a phase of renewal, and the best is ahead of me. Substack is not social media, and I’m not fishing for congratulations. The reason I tell you this is that, after a long spell of angry and gloomy reflections and predictions, I am more optimistic, and wish, if possible, to offer hope and even some practical suggestions so that we can take up arms against Mordor and the forces of evil. For the situation is no less dire—however happy you might be personally, there’s no gainsaying that—and action must be taken if we are to save this Shire of ours.

A word about the Shire, first. Obviously, it’s Tolkien’s vision of England, or perhaps Britain—he was strongly influenced by Welsh myth and language—and although he was writing seventy or more years ago, it’s a vision that was already somewhat nostalgic, idealised, even arguably sentimental. He knew very well that the old rural England he had grown up in before the First World War was vanishing fast, and was menaced not merely by Mordor and the Orcs, who doubtless owe much to the Nazis with their pitiless barbarism and totalitarianism, but also from within, by the greed and lust for power that afflicts and tempts the best of us—Bilbo and Frodo, and the corrupted, debased ex-Hobbit, Gollum, who is not so much an adversary as a Shadow of the hero, his unacknowledged self. Unquestionably, were he alive today, Tolkien and his close friend, CS Lewis, would be horrified at how much worse Britain has become in the past half century, in almost every respect. If in their time Christianity was in retreat, in ours it has been almost stamped out, and replaced by a perverse pseudo-religion, a combination of death cult, which has legalised child murder up to the day of birth, as well as ‘assisted suicide’ or euthanasia, with worship of all traditions and ethnic groups except our own, which is to be vilified at all times, a repressive and ever-more intrusive government which has made the country the worst in the world for surveillance, a sustained attack on traditional families, along with constant promotion of LGBT ‘lifestyles’, particularly transgenderism, which the state is especially keen to encourage, and a police force that no longer attempts to solve crimes, but devotes almost all its efforts to controlling speech and thought.

Just to illustrate how confused many young people are: yesterday, I was in Aberystwyth, a pleasant Victorian seaside resort. There I saw a man, walking blithely along the street in a skirt; and another, on the front, wearing shorts, and a yellow bikini bra—despite the complete absence of breasts, and a beard. Almost all the women I saw were tattooed, some of them as heavily as Queequeg in Moby Dick, and many of them had hair dyed bright green, blue, or scarlet. They also tended to wear black, sometimes strangely fey steampunk outfits, full of lace and chiffon, but with colossal combat boots and alarming amounts of makeup. But this is all harmless, you may say, and doesn’t hurt you in the least. These people are just expressing themselves, showing they are rebels, as perhaps your generation did back in the hippie days. Well yes, but… what strikes me, as I walk among the urban tribes of Britain, with their strictly conformist uniforms, which ironically are designed to proclaim their nonconformity, is that a national identity no longer exists. Before my very eyes, the realm is disintegrating, and sub-nations and tribes are forming, all intent on showing by their appearance where their loyalties lie, and what their values are. For most of them, Christianity is not merely dead, but a forgotten creed, akin to Zoroastrianism—my generation too was pagan, but we were at least familiar with the Bible, from school, whereas the younger generations are completely ignorant of it. They live in an ethical limbo, where everything is permitted, even killing your own children—for example the singer Lily Allen says she lost count of her abortions, and got pregnant ‘all the time’. The purpose of life is to have fun, and fulfil yourself, regardless of how it affects others. Insofar as they have any worldview, it’s one based on neo-Marxism, even though they have not read Marx or any of the French post-structuralists. Still, they devoutly believe that white westerners, particularly men, are guilty of the Original Sin of colonialism, and responsible for almost all the suffering and injustice in the world, even in countries that were never colonised, or that became independent eighty years ago. They would be unrecognisable as British subjects to Victorians, but even to people of my parents’ generation, who remember the Nazis.

So far, perhaps this is not inspiring you with hope. But in my miraculous valley in mid-Wales, in a village where many of the locals still speak Welsh, and the mainly retired English settlers are preternaturally friendly, under the steep, fir-clad hills, walking by the rushing rivers and along streets built of schist and slate, the joy you feel is inescapable. This is the world Tolkien, Aragorn and Frodo fought to preserve. Nature is intact, magnificent, powerful—you feel as walk in the forests that the Ents might just rise up and march with you, if you can rouse them. Many people are artists of one kind of another. Perhaps it’s true, as I heard someone say on a podcast this week, that Britain is evolving into an anarcho-tyranny: the government no longer seems to be trying to organise public life, or even the economy, which is clearly beyond its control, and yet strives to monitor everything we say and think, and punish anyone who utters any anti-progressive blasphemy. Still, in the rural areas, where the hobbits live, life is, if not unchanged, at least recognisably British, even now. People drink tea, go to quiz nights—I was invited to one yesterday—and gather in writing groups, and for film nights. They hike and bike. They read books—the number of bookshops in the local little town astonished me. Even if the cities have fallen, there must be hope that communities like this will be the kernel of new kingdoms, if Britain as we know it collapses and we return to a kind of Dark Ages period of tribal and ethnic warfare.

So—join, or form, a community. Get out of the city. Get fit. Overcome the reliance on the mindless entertainment of electronics, especially the phone, which is as pernicious as drugs. Stop taking drugs. Stop drinking. Get fit—I know I’ve said it before, but it’s crucial. Fall in love—that’s the best work of all if you can get it, as the Gershwins wrote 95 years ago. The world is beautiful, and it’s a miracle that we are alive to experience it. Be grateful. The world you grew up is falling apart, sure. But a new one will take its place, and we can help build it. It might even be better than the old one. When the Roman Empire fell to the barbarians, who would have thought that the Germanic tribes would create a greater civilization? And yet medieval Europe, at least in the high Middle Ages, was in many respects superior to antiquity, particularly ethically, and the Renaissance surpassed it. Frodo and his friends may have been just ordinary little hobbits, but through their courage and honesty they saved the world.

We must do the same.