As if I haven’t got enough to do, I have taken on the editorship of Mallorn, the Journal of the Tolkien Society. After much feverish work over the Christmas vacation, the first issue on my watch (there will be two a year) has now been cast as a Shadow of DOOM on the doorsteps of around 1,000 members of the Tolkien Society, each and every one noted for their exuberance, their raw power – and their punctuality.

Reaction so far has been good … but given the wrenching 180-degree swing in editorial tone, direction, design, style, typeface and practically everything else, I am expecting some raised eyebrows.

But I’m an editor, dammit, and we editors belong to the fauna of Mordor. We thrive on confusion, malice, heartbreak and despair. So if I don’t get a few orcs lobbed at me at the Tolkien Society Annual Dinner in April, I shall take it as a personal slight, and, what’s more, a professional failure. Ride for Wrath, Ride for Ruin, and a Red Dawn, and so on, and so forth.