The tree-hugging Tolkien freaks, once they get around to seeing the movie and reading the books, tend to go on to read other things that he did. In 1936 he gave a British Academy lecture...

There’s also all the tedious academic books that come out. There’s something like a book or an article on Beowulf being produced every week at the moment.

The story is getting out there,

It’s a fabulous story . . . It’s got these supernatural elements as well. It’s one man’s fight against a man-shaped monster and against his mother who is bestial, and then against a dragon.

It’s the great masterwork of Anglo-Saxon England and everything else flows from that.

That was a big boost.