TEDx speaker | Creator: Start Something Good® | Public Speaker | Fellow @theRSAorg | Trauma survivor | C S Lewis & Tolkien
South Wales, UK 🏴
- Tweets 10,573
- Following 4,639
- Followers 3,104
- Likes 7,766
Pinned Tweet
Some lessons on creativity and collaboration from my @TEDx @TEDxNantymoel talk:
"Taking Tolkien to Work" (with copious references to C S Lewis).
@Cwmpas_Coop @TolkienWonder @TeawithTolkien @CSLewisInst @CSLewis_Society @LewisGroupNI @malcolmguite
youtube.com/watch?v=xrs5fyMK…
3
7
2,616
"Reminiscences on the theme of 'What Tolkien means to me' are always worth reading for the sheer immensity of the experience. For most of the children of my generation, meeting Tolkien for the first time was a big thing a kind of cultural detonation..."
1
80
Really looking forward to getting stuck into this new book on Tolkien, The King Under the Mountain
3
74
Martin Downes FRSA 🏴 retweeted
Tonight's harvest moon, the first full moon after the autumnal equinox, has a special history. This is what Sir Gawain and the Green Knight calls the 'Michaelmas moon', and in the old Anglo-Saxon calendar it was the herald of winter.
patreon.com/clerkofoxford/po…
'Michaelmas moon' is the full moon which occurs close to the feast, and the time around it. In 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Michaelmas moon is said to bring with it 'wynter wage' - a chill pledge of winter coming, and the prospect of accounts to be settled.
17
348
1,492
34,498
Martin Downes FRSA 🏴 retweeted
Delighted to be invited to host the launch of this.
The life story of a man who has done so much for young people in The Rhondda.
#FromRucksToRedemption
1
7
29
3,708
On this day in 1937, the publication of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. I have a particular fondness for this edition as it baptised my imagination way back in 1985-6.
2
1
6
257
Lowry's paintings of south Wales from the 1960s (Hillside / Six Bells, Abertillery / Bargoed). It would be great to see these at @Museum_Cardiff
1
6
210
L S Lowry's painting of Bargoed (1965). Remarkable that he painted this as an old man whilst visiting the South Wales valleys. It is in The Lowry, Salford, but was on display once at Bargoed Library. It would be great to loan it again.
1
75
Martin Downes FRSA 🏴 retweeted
21 September 1937. John Ronald Reuel (“JRR”) Tolkien’s,The Hobbit, was published in the UK. The book is set in Tolkien’s fictional universe and follows the quest of home-loving, Bilbo Baggins, to win a share of the treasure guarded by Smaug the dragon.
13
52
2,379
Martin Downes FRSA 🏴 retweeted
Many folk will have heard of the artist LS Lowry ; Stephen Lawrence) but maybe not a photo of him.
Here he is amongst the scenery he painted.
@helen_warlow
35
148
1,616
27,422
One of the first serious paintings from my art education back in the day.
MURDER IN A BATHTUB today on @TheRestHistory, as we embark on a 6 part epic on the French Revolution's REIGN OF TERROR.
How Jean-Paul Marat came to meet with knife-wielding beauty from Normandy, Charlotte Corday...
linktr.ee/restishistory
93
To illustrate the point here's the density of the Downes surname in the UK in 1901 and 1911. The small pocket in the Rhondda comes from Henry Downes settling in Dowlais, Swansea, and then the growing family of 11 children being in Trehafod from c.1882-1955.
2
140
Narnia isn't static. There's a thread throughout it of belief/unbelief, the old stories, the old Narnia. Almost as if C S Lewis was some kind of apologist defending it from inauthentic visions and alternative myths.
This is such a horrific betrayal. Lewis devoted much of his literary criticism to defending the importance of Stock Responses in literature, to the need for us to see witches as bad and heroes as good; darkness as a danger and light as a glory.
It is not The Magician's Nephew; it is The Last Battle, and as we know, in this world we lose.
1
94