Thanks for the sites. There is a lot of additional material in the Appendices to LOTR including the fates of the members of the fellowship for those who might be interested. In the movie the story Elrond tells in predicting Arwen's fate if she marries Aragorn is pretty much straight out of the appendices. Very sad.

With the identity of the Shire fixed on Warwickshire then we can look at foods that came from there. Anyone out there who is familiar with that area?

Last night I saw a biography of Tolkien that talked of his writing the books with an eye to establishing an English mythology. He bemoaned the fact that the original English myths were stamped out by the Normans and supplanted with those brought in by the French and others.