April's literary house

I had this all set to go then in the rush to the book launch on Saturday forgot all about it!

There are few imaginary homes which have so influenced modern architecture, albeit usually of the individual, self-built sort, than Bilbo Baggins’ hole in the ground in The Hobbit, so I know I am far from alone in fantasising about owning my own hobbit hole. All together now!

‘In a hole in the ground …’

 

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

 

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob exactly in the middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill – The Hill, as all the people for many miles around called it – and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.”

 

I think any fan must have cheered when they saw the recreation of Bag End in the first Lord of the Rings film – just what we’d always dreamed of!