Once More With Footnotes

the time. It also preserved them, which wasn't the intention. Since then we have been great accumulators of invaders' gods, creating a magpie mythology that grabbed hold of anything that shone nicely. Some of the pieces came together to fo r m the Matter of Britain, the Arthurian legend spun out of other legends to become the great British story. It's built into the landscape, from one end of the country to the other. Every hill is Arthur's Throne, every cavern is Merlin's Cave.
     
                  Stories bege t stories. I've always suspected that Robin Hood was just another robber, but he did have the advantage of a very powerful weapon. It was not the longbow. It was the voice of Alan a Dale, the minstrel. Weaponry will only keep you alive, but a good ballad c an make you immortal.
     
                  Then this rich rural tradition was locked up in the mills of the early Industrial Revolution, which pressure-cooked it.
     
                  Of course there had always been fantasy. It's the Ur-literature from which all the others sprang, and it devel oped in the cave right alongside religion. They grew from the same root: if we draw the right pictures and find the right words, we can steer the world, ensure the success of the hunt, keep ourselves safe from the thunder, negotiate with Death. A phrase s o metimes linked with fantasy is "tales of gods and heroes", and the two go together. The first heroes were the ones who defied or tricked or robbed the gods, for the good of the tribe, and came back to tell the story.
     
                  But it was in the last century that f antasy took on an additional role as a means of escape, away out of the perceived grimness of the industrialising world. Out of the same pot, I've always felt, came the English obsession with gardens, with the making of little private plots that could bec o me, for an hour or so, the whole world.
     
                  Some vitriol was printed a couple of years ago when The Lord of the Rings was voted the best book of the century in a poll of Waterstone's readers. Certain critics felt that the public were being jolly ungrateful a fter all they had done for them, the beasts. It didn't matter. The book is beyond their control. They might as well have been throwing bricks at a mountain; it doesn't cause any damage and it makes the mountain slightly higher. The book is now a classic, a nd real classics aren't created by diktat.
     
                  J. R. R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it's big and up close. Sometimes it's a shape on the ho rizon. Sometimes it's not there at all, which means either that the artist has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.
     
                  Fantasy worlds have a huge attraction. There are rules bui lt in. The appeal is simple and beguiling in the complex world of the 20th century. Evil has a map reference and a remedy — the finding of a sword, the returning of a Grail, the destruction of a ring. The way will be tough but at least it has a signpost. If the Good exhibit enough goodness, moral fibre, and bravery they will win through, although at some cost. And for a span they'll live happily ever after ... until they have to do it again.
     
                  And yet ... The Lord of the Rings, while English to the bone, was not a typical British fantasy book. It was not part of the mainstream, even though it is now a river in its own right and has spawned numerous tributaries and has come to define "fantasy" for many people.
     
                  It was unusual because it started and finished in a world which is like ours but which isn't ours, a world with different rules and created with meticulous attention to detail and, above all, a world that you cannot get to from here. There is no magic door to Middle Earth apart from the covers of the bo o k. There is no entry by magic carpet, wardrobe, dream, or swan-drawn chariot. It is a separate creation.
     
                  Since and because of Tolkien there have been more fantasy universes that you can shake a curiously-engraved sword at, but the British have traditiona lly desired their fantasy world to be a lot closer to home. We like them to be about as close as