Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Mendeley Again

Major crisis with my bibliographic software - which is, of course, an extension of my brain...

I have long, loyally, supported Jabref - which is free, open source, sturdy and forgiving.  Jabref is a graphic interface for a Bibtex file.  We pick up our reference material from all sorts of places, with all sorts of encoding junk slotted in to it - but with Jabref we were able simply to ignore the junk, and stay true to UTF-8.  Until now...

This makes it sound as if I know what I am doing...  I am just a loyal, trusting, naive user...

Generally it is nice to see open source projects get active.  But...  A recent upgrade by the Jabref team has created major 'special character' problems.  'Special characters', like the special characters you find in Irish family names.  French family names.  Spanish family names.  Portuguese family names...

And this happened at a bad point in my backup regime...  I had let my guard down, I admit it...  Jabref, sturdy and forgiving...

Suddenly I had a bibliographic database that was full of visible coding junk.  I do keep back up routes open - through NYU I have access to Refworks, and I keep accounts open with Zotero and with Mendeley.

So, after thought, I took my Bibtex file into Mendeley, for a tidy up - and have rediscovered why I dislike Mendeley...  First the good thing...  That big clean screen has made tidying out the junk easy.  My database needed a good preen anyway...

But Mendeley, Mendeley...

It has all been said before...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-seTYixNf0

And this, by singer Kit Nelson, is really good - chewing those 30s/40s vowels...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCeMQEKfvOU

Interesting to see, from the comments on Kit Nelson's page, that people now do this monologue for drama examinations...

Mendeley...  Mendeley...  Secretive and silent...

Listening to BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, Tolkien the Lost Recordings

Tolkien:  the Lost Recordings was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday August 6 2016, and is still available on the BBC web site...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07mvd5z

The Producers are Anna Scott-Brown and Adam Fowler.  It is an Overtone production for BBC Radio 4.

http://overtoneproductions.co.uk/

Well, yes, I now feel that, as far as this project is concerned, my work is done.

Nunc dimittis - cue image of Oxford towers, and plaintive music. 

And on to the next rescue.

I thought that the programme worked very well, and that the decision to pitch it to the Tolkien scholars and the Tolkien enthusiasts was the right one.  So, for me, the calming discoveries were the contributions of Dimitra Fimi and Tom Shippey.  With that, and Stuart Lee's forthcoming article, we can now say that Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' has its appropriate place in Tolkien Studies.

The technical solutions to the presentation problems were fun - like the Joss Ackland character, the bemused and only slightly interested interlocutor.  It was like something from Louis MacNeice, and the glory days of radio 'features'.  Well done, Adam and Anna of Overtone...  Very brave...

But, of course, we have simply created or postponed yet further need to delve in archives.  So, yes, Leslie Megahey's 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' now has its appropriate place in Tolkien Studies.  But do we now need a study of the place of that 1968 film 'Tolkien in Oxford' in Megahey Studies?

Somewhere in the Overtone archives, there is a bit where Patrick O'Sullivan outlines, so succinctly and elegantly, the cinematic techniques of Leslie Megahey - as discovered in 'Tolkien in Oxford' - and their development in the subsequent career.

But, as Tolkien said - or was it Marx? - we make history, but not in circumstances of our choosing...

Patrick O'Sullivan

August 2016

Archive on 4, BBC Radio 4, Tolkien - the Lost Recordings

I have gathered and tidied this information, below, about the forthcoming Archive on 4 programme on BBC Radio 4, about the 1968 Leslie Megahey BBC film, 'Tolkien in Oxford'.  This Archive on 4 is an Overtone Productions Ltd. Programme for the BBC...

http://overtoneproductions.co.uk/

Regular readers will know that a number of us, led by Leslie Megahey, have worked to restore and mend the film, and to explore its place in Tolkien Studies.  My colleague, Dr. Stuart Lee, Oxford, is writing the academic article about the film and the background, and - as can be seen - he is a lead player in the Archive on 4 programme.  So, as regards this project, the work is done...

There is a delightful symmetry in bringing Joss Ackland into this project - I have remarked before on what a lovely job he did on the readings in the original 1968 film.  

One ring to rule them all...

Patrick O'Sullivan

Glucksman Ireland House, New York University http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/page/faculty

Tolkien - the Lost Recordings

Archive on 4

6 August 2016

8pm BBC Radio 4

Joss Ackland narrates a quest through BBC archives for unheard gems from JRR Tolkien, as Oxford Academic, Dr Stuart Lee, discovers the un-broadcast offcuts from an interview given by the author of the Lord of the Rings. 

Tolkien gave the interview for a BBC film in 1968, but only a tiny part of it was used in the broadcast programme. It was one of only a handful of recorded interviews he gave, and was to be his last. Dr Lee’s search for the un-broadcast rushes takes him to the depths of the BBC film archives, and back to the making of the original film: ‘Tolkien in Oxford.’

For the director, Lesley Megahey, only 23 at the time, this was his first film, and the one that launched a prestigious career. The programme reunites him with three others: researcher, Patrick O’Sullivan; Tolkien fan, Michael Hebbert - and critic Valentine Cunningham, who describes how he was brought in to be the voice of dissent challenging the burgeoning Tolkien cult spreading from America.

What emerges is a picture of a playful academic, whose fiction was little respected by adults at the time and looked down on as a lesser form of literature. But he is robustly defended by Professor Tom Shippey and remembered fondly by his colleague Dr Roger Highfield.

Stuart Lee presents the results of his search through the archives to Dr Dimitra Fimi who considers any new words from Tolkien’s mouth as ‘gold’. While, for Dr Lee, the real ‘dragon’s hoard’ is the privilege of hearing Tolkien in relaxed mode reflecting on his life as never before.