Simon Tolkien
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien
Author of The Palace At The End Of The Sea
A young man comes of age and crosses continents in search of an identity―and a cause―at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War in a thrilling, timely, and emotional historical saga.
New York City, 1929. Young Theo Sterling’s world begins to unravel as the Great Depression exerts its icy grip. He finds it hard to relate to his parents: His father, a Jewish self-made businessman, refuses to give up on the American dream, and his mother, a refugee from religious persecution in Mexico, holds fast to her Catholic faith. When disaster strikes the family, Theo must learn who he is. A charismatic school friend and a firebrand girl inspire him to believe he can fight Fascism and change the world, but each rebellion comes at a higher price, forcing Theo to question these ideologies too.
From New York’s Lower East Side to an English boarding school to an Andalusian village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, Theo’s harrowing journey from boy to man is set against a backdrop of societies torn apart from within, teetering on the edge of a terrible war to which Theo is compulsively drawn like a moth to a flame.
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien
Author I draw inspiration from:
J.R.R.Tolkien and The Lord Of the Rings. I think that I felt inhibited by my grandfather’s extraordinary achievements for many years and that that partly explained why I didn’t start writing until I was forty. But I had always admired the power of his storytelling in The Lord Of the Rings that which keeps the reader spellbound through three volumes, the ingenuity of the narrative structure that pits the small against the great, and his descriptive ability to make us see another world; and I felt a new sense of kinship to him when I wrote No Man’s Land, which is in part about the terrible Battle of the Somme where he fought in 1916, And afterward, as I labored for seven years on The Palace at the End of the Sea and The Room of Lost Steps, I thought of him working without a contract on The Lord of the Rings for twelve years, refusing to give up until it was complete. In times of doubt and uncertainty,(of which there were many), I remembered him and kept the faith.
Below is a picture of my grandparents and me in Oxford in 1967.
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
Sitting outside my bedroom with my beloved pug, Sadie, beside me, looking down over the oak trees to the distant ocean.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Steerpike in Gormenghast which has always been one of my favorite books. I love the way he uses cunning and intelligence to climb up through the rigid castle hierarchy from the lowliest beginning as a kitchen scrubber to finally attain power, before he meets his match in the prince, Titus Groan. I think that hearing about Steerpike's extraordinary ascent might distract me from my fear that the elevator is going to fall.
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I spent the first two thirds of my life convinced that I couldn’t write fiction because I was too self-conscious, and I thought the words wouldn’t flow. But I think the need to create bubbled up in me until I couldn’t bottle it up any longer, and I finally took up my pen as the century turned.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
I remember being lonely as a child because I had no siblings and lived in a small village where I didn’t know anyone because I went to a school a long car ride away from home. For many years, I thought I’d had a raw deal, but now I feel I was lucky because I used my alone time to read books. Or rather consumed them, feeding my imagination! And my greatest pride and joy were my own books. I saved my pocket money to buy hardback editions of Dickens, Trollope, Jane Austen etc, and took great pleasure in arranging and rearranging them on my shelves. By size or by alphabetical name of author. I think they made me feel safe and that they were part of my identity. The books contained worlds where I could travel far and wide, leaving my solitary bedroom behind!
Now, fifty plus years later, I read on my phone, enlarging the font more each year as my eyesight deteriorates. But I have not lost my love of books and I make a point of buying a hardback copy of books that I’ve really enjoyed reading. The last one I bought was A Place for Us by Fatima Mirza - a truly magnificent book about the modern immigrant experience in America. And sometimes I look up at my shelves and feel a sense of kinship to the boy I once was, faraway on the other side of the world in an era before ebooks and computers.
The last book I read:
Dissolution by CJ Sansom. It’s set in an English monastery in 1540 where there have been a series of murders that a hunchback lawyer has been sent by Thomas Cromwell to solve. Shades of The Name of the Rose, but also a wonderful evocation of what it was like to live in Tudor England. It’s been made into a TV show called Shardlake that I’m looking forward to watching.
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
All computer. I could barely type when I started out as a novelist and employed a typist to copy type my manuscripts, but now I wouldn’t know how to write a paragraph without delete and cut and paste. These days, my books take a long time to write, particularly since I switched from crime to historical fiction. The research for The Palace at the End of the Sea and The Room of Lost Steps took as long as the writing - close to three years for each. My process is to read all the primary sources I can get my hands on and create multiple files of relevant material that I can then access as I write, all marked up in different colored highlights. I was a barrister - (trial attorney) - before I was a writer, and the organizational skills I learned preparing cases have really helped me with my books.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind. I love her fieriness and her refusal to give in, even when faced with overwhelming adversity.
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
I’d still be a barrister in my wig and gown defending clients charged with murder and mayhem. Or maybe not! I did the job for ten years and loved it. So much was at stake and so much depended on me as I cross-examined witnesses and tried to persuade juries that there was reasonable doubt on which they could hang an acquittal. But the stress was overwhelming with overdoses of adrenaline coursing through my veins, and I think I may have ended up in intensive care if I’d kept going.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
But my wife, Tracy Tolkien is an expert on fashion and wrote one of the definitive books on its 20th century history - Vintage The Art of Dressing Up, so I’m going to leave it to her to answer the question.
She says: "I like the Twenties the most because it is the first time women escaped from their corsets so as to be able to move freely and naturally. I love the pleasing geometry and clean lines achieved by the Twenties dress designers, channeling the art deco movement."
Place I’d most like to travel:
Scandinavia and especially Copenhagen with its beautiful architecture. I’d like to see the fiords and the forests and find out why Finns and Norwegians are always ranked in surveys as being the happiest people on earth.
My signature drink:
Pimms No. 1 Cup. Every evening, I pour a small amount of this quintessentially English drink into the bottom of a tall glass and fill it up with diet 7Up. I emigrated from England to California seventeen years ago and this is one of my remaining links to the old country.
Favorite artist:
All of the Impressionists. The late nineteenth century France that they painted is for me a vision of heaven. I came to them later in life and it is a lasting regret to me that I didn’t spend weekends in the National Gallery and the Tate when I lived in London for 25 years. But sometimes there are wonderful exhibitions here in Southern California, and last month I spent a day at the Getty in LA looking at Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings of his male friends in Paris. They were so vivid that I felt as if the subjects were really there just on the other side of the glass, if I could only find a way to reach across ...
Number one on my bucket list:
Celebrating the publication of The Palace at the End of the Sea at a dinner with my friends and family and thanking them for their love and support. It’s been an eight and a half year journey with many twists and turns and I find it hard to believe that it’s finally coming to an end.
Anything else you'd like to add:
Thank you for the fun questions. They made me think about my life in a different way and put a smile on my face.
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About Simon Tolkien:
Author Interview - Simon Tolkien
Simon Tolkien is the author of No Man’s Land, Orders from Berlin, The King of Diamonds, The Inheritance, and Final Witness. He studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford, and went on to become a London barrister specializing in criminal defense. Simon is the grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien and is a director of the Tolkien Estate. In 2022 he was named as series consultant to the Amazon TV series The Rings of Power. He lives with his wife, vintage fashion author Tracy Tolkien, and their two children, Nicholas and Anna, in Southern California. For more information, visit www.simontolkien.com.
