Brian Sibley

Brian Sibley is an author and broadcaster. His first love was animation and Disney. He began his career writing scripts for Disneytime, has written over 100 hours of radio drama, including definitive adaptations of The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Once and Future King, and Gormenghast and eventually became the biographer of Peter Jackson and the author of dozens of Making Of… books for projects like the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter films etc.

His connection to Tolkien began with a speculative letter making a number of suggestions of books that he would like to adapt into radio plays and included a particular plea for The Lord of the Rings. This came at such an auspicious moment that the BBC wondered if Sibley had been tipped off that they were negotiating the rights! The enormous success of this series has lead to a whole string of Tolkien projects over the years and in 2022, he achieved the rare honour of being the first person other than Christopher Tolkien to edit a major ‘new’ Tolkien volume, The Fall of Númenor.

Sibley is one of the few outsiders who developed a genuine rapport with Christopher Tolkien who was famously protective of his father’s work and sceptical of adaptations. However, after hearing the 1981 radio series, he sent Sibley a warm letter of praise, particularly admiring Michael Hordern’s Gandalf. Christopher once sent Sibley a private tape recording of himself reading Tolkien’s names aloud to ensure the radio actors didn’t “butcher” the Elvish. Sibley kept this tape as a prized possession for decades. When Sibley was working on the 1992 Tales from the Perilous Realm series, Christopher jokingly warned him that “the Dragon [Chrysophylax] is a very dangerous character to get mixed up with.”

Sibley often says that his goal is never to replace the book, but to act as a bridge. He once said:

“If a listener finishes the radio play and immediately wants to go and read the book to find out what I left out, then I have done my job perfectly.”

1981	The Lord of the Rings	Full cast dramatisation in 26 parts
1992	Tales from the Perilous Realm	Farmer Giles of Ham Smith of Wootton Major The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Leaf by Niggle
1992	The Hobbit	Abridged reading by Michael Hordern in 15 parts
2022	The Fall of Númenor	Unabridged narration by Brian Sibley & Samuel West