And the number of the towers shall be two. Or three. Or… five? If it’s not clear yet, we’ll clear it up in this introduction to Book III of The Lord of the Rings, and the second volume of the not-really-a-trilogy that happens to be named after some arbitrarily chosen pair of very tall buildings. We also look back at the story so far and learn that Tolkien himself was the first person to leave Tom Bombadil out of an adaptation of his work. Plus, what we did over our summer break: including favorite moments from this year’s online Oxonmoot and Mythmoot.

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