“But why,” asked Bertrand, “Why did it take the old fellow so long to figure out the true account, eh?”
I leant back and puffed on my pipe. The year was 1989, and I was dining in Merton College’s newly renovated Granwich Hall, in attendance at the annual Dinner in Aid of Recalcitrant Youths, a cause dear to many of the college’s tutors and decorated alumni.
The fellow opposite me, my old classmate and an old (though not especially dear) friend, known as Bertrand Packer. An enthusiastic fellow, though with a grating speaking voice and a tendency to slow-wittedness. He was not among the finer specimens of Merton’s alumni, but his tenacity tended to serve him where his brilliance fell short. He looked now eagerly at me, over owlish spectacles that framed his moonlike face most comically, eagerly awaiting my answer.
We were, of course, speaking of our old tutor in years gone by, the genial Professor John Tolkien. To us, of course, he had first and foremost been nothing more than another (if a singular) professor - which is to say a troublesome impediment to our nobly studious goals of drinking cheap wine in dubious bars and falling madly and frequently in love with any young lady in our orbit (each fairer and more enchanting than the previous Helenesque beauty) - a decent sort of fellow, but no more than a peripheral presence in our heady days of vivacious youth.
Yet to some beyond even these hallowed chambers, the name of Tolkien has improbably spread, following the extraordinary commercial success of the old scholar’s life’s work - his reconstruction and translation of The Red Book of Westmarch (subsequently improperly divided and published under dubious titles). To this day, I cannot think of another historical account that has somehow achieved the same degree of fame that The Red Book has enjoyed; nor can I name a philologist (or linguist, or moderately competent university tutor) who has enjoyed greater fame than Professor Tolkien did for his long years of labour, painstakingly piecing together this long-lost and unloved ancient history.
Old Tollers always kept his sources and his methods close to his chest, to the great irritation of more than a few scholars. However, in the years following his death, more and more material from his notes had been published, almost all of it curated by his son. At first, these had simply been miscellanies adjacent to The Red Book; various Elvish fragments and tales, accounts of various secondary peoples, some brief notes concerning broader histories.
But then, to the shock and wonder of some, Chris had recently published a volume explicitly concerned with his father’s work on The Lord of the Rings that demonstrably proved that, at one point, the old professor had been untangling a version of the tale that appeared very different from the published version. Names were mistranslated. Events were terribly misconstrued. In some cases, critical (and basic) facts were completely other to the published version - the misidentification of Aragorn Elessar as yet another hobbit (with a ridiculous nickname to go with it) being an obvious example.
And more volumes were on the way, too. For years it had been assumed that Tolkien’s work on translating the Red Book formed the definitive version, yet given the man’s own extraordinary difficulties in working through the material, that singular claim now seemed in doubt.
To tell the truth, I had paid very little attention to the entire affair, being at the time somewhat on the fringes of historical and linguistic academia. Following my Oxford studies, I had elected to pursue a postgraduate career in the States, enticed by the promises of a bold new academic world with deep pockets and a healthy respect for an English university education - from either university, mind you.
Twenty-two years later, following stints in Boston, Princeton, Ithaca, Chicago, and Sacramento, I found myself disillusioned with the Great American Dream, broke, and out of favour with various figures in the New World establishment, owing to various grossly misconstrued transgressions on both sides. In short, I was in need of a change in scenery, and so returned to England, finding that both food and weather (which, when I had first come to America, I had thought distinctly inferior) were in fact lessened in quality yet again.
Regrettably, I had rather failed to maintain my trans-Atlantic connections over the interceding years, and found that the English educational establishment had little interest in me. As such, I adopted a transiently liminal existence, drifting from odd job to odd job, seeing out a semester here, a few weeks there, as I gained a reputation for being one of the finest second-choice teachers around - or, at the very least, one of the most available and willing.
It was in this sorry state that I was attending the Dinner, being in Oxford at the time in order to deputise for Pr. Kathy Buxton’s celebrated class on the poetry of Virginia Woolf; Buxton herself having recently tragically choked to death on a fish bone, without even having the good grace to give the faculty prior notice of her imminent demise. As such, I had learnt rather more than I thought there was to know about poetry, Virginia Woolf, and Virginia Woolf’s poetry over the past eight days, and my mind could not possibly have been further away from old Tollers, or his work, when Packer began his rambling musings on the matter.
“Do you think,” persevered Packer with indomitably languid thought, “that he might have perhaps…made it all up?”
“Impossible,” I replied, deeply preoccupied with my pudding and trying to pay as little heed as possible to any superfluous activity. “Too many sources in Westron, and Sindarin for that matter. Can’t be made up.”
“But maybe his linguistic breakthroughs were falsified, or exaggerated,” persevered Packer, callously heedless of my own pointed disinterest. “How would anyone have known, after all? What if the entire field’s based on fraudulent research, on faulty premises?”
A new voice interjected in cold, hard tones. “Ah. The Tolkien problem?”
I glanced across and to my right, to be met with the unflinchingly crystal gaze of Alistair McTiernan. Fiercely academic, hawkish and utterly discompassionate, McTiernan was respected and feared for his astute judgements and keen mind. A swoop of brilliant white hair brushed across his high forehead, and his lankily imposing build rather accentuated the impression that McTiernan had stepped from some unfortunate student’s examinatory nightmare and promptly taken up residence in the college’s draughty halls.
His piercing attention did little to dissuade my colleague, however; Packer was not given to noticing such distinctions as were boasted by the fearsome McTiernan. “Yes, yes indeed. What do you think of it all, Alistair?”
If Packer’s unwarranted familiarity disturbed McTiernan, his aquiline features did not betray it. Indeed, a flicker of unsettling interest suddenly danced in those bright blue eyes. Among McTiernan’s many qualifications, he was in those days one of the world’s foremost speakers of both Westron and Sindarin, having eagerly pursued mastery of both following Tolkien’s extraordinary feat in unravelling these long-forgotten tongues.
“The problem,” replied McTiernan acerbically, “is not one of linguistic comprehension. It never was. Tolkien may have unlocked the key to understanding these ancient languages, but his work has since been thoroughly corroborated, and is rarely found wanting.”
“Then how’d he get so much…well, wrong?” asked Packer, blissfully unwilling to draw his own conclusion. “Surely he just had to translate the bally thing and that’d be that?”
“Hardly. But as I said, the issue is not linguistic.” McTiernan’s glinting eyes turned to me. “Your friend is nearer to discerning the fundamental problem that Tolkien faced. Too many sources, indeed.”
To my own surprise, I found myself compelled to listen as McTiernan warmed into the subject. Despite his monotonal and sparse rhetoric, he was oddly enthralling when he chose to be. “The Red Book was copied and recopied many times, in the years, even the centuries, following the conclusion of the Third Age. And in the process, much was altered, omitted, or added. It was in the separation and removal of this extraneous material, a process that often itself relied upon secondary dubious sources, that led the late Tolkien down so many false starts and faulty premises.”
“Is that so, now?” asked Packer, who seemed to be losing interest in the subject as rapidly as I was becoming captivated. “So you’re saying…you’re saying Tolkien had too much material to work with? Too many spurious sources and post-fact myths?”
“Indeed.”
I leant forward now, in an attempt to remain audible over the slumbering hubbub of the drowsy and tipsy luminaries gently engaged in their own lilting conversations all about. “But these notes, the works that Chris is publishing, these are his father’s notes, his initial attempts at translation and interpretation. Not the sources themselves.”
McTiernan’s face had, I suspect, not been graced with a smile for years untold, and he certainly had no intention of breaking such a habit in my meagre company. But there was a twitch of barely-restrained (by his austere standards) excitement as he, too, leant closer in, doubtless recognising my own understanding. “Quite so. In the early days, Tolkien was able to acquire many extant sources from the First through the Third Ages - nobody could understand them, see, so nothing was thought of it. Those sources are kept to this day by his estate, and access is tightly controlled.”
“Many? So not all?”
“Indeed. As interest in the ancient histories and languages grew, new sources were uncovered, some in strange and unlikely places. Ironically, Tolkien’s success was now his enemy - public interest meant that he had priced himself out of acquiring these newly discovered texts. Near-all our primary sources are, alas, now in the hands of private collectors - either Tolkien’s estate, or various other wealthy enthusiasts.” McTiernan sighed, his sunken cheeks gaunt and sorrowful. “The greatest linguistic breakthrough since the Rosetta Stone, and the greatest chance at gaining historical knowledge, and our chance to study it from the sources is near-none.”
“Surely some of these collectors must be willing, though, to allow access?” I asked.
McTiernan chuckled, a hollow sound that resembled nothing more than a feeble fist beating upon the inside of a coffin lid. “Tolkien’s estate, if you can believe it, are among the more generous of the collectors in that regard. No, in the early ‘70s, the Americans made something of a clean sweep at auction, and have been steadily acquiring miscellanies ever since. Aside from a few isolated remnants of material, as of yet unauctioned, the vast majority of sources are owned by Tolkien’s estate, or American moguls with an eye for a quick profit. The chances of you, or I, ever handling one (much less studying one) are remote indeed.” His tight lips thinned, “No matter.” And he returned to careful consideration of his near-empty brandy.
I, for my part, could think of little else that evening, but by morning my thoughts had turned to weightier and less fanciful matters. In truth, I barely thought further about Middle-earth or its study for some time, though a seed of curiosity had been planted…a seed that slept, dormant and lifeless in the dry shadows, until it was gifted its chance to bloom. A chance that did not come for nine more years.
*****
The Tuesday that changed my life forever happened to fall on November the 24th, in 1998
It was, for the most part, an unremarkable day. Though an official university position continued to prove elusive (it would not be until the following year that I would finally be granted that singular academic distinction for which we all strive), I had settled rather comfortably into my role as tutor for hire. This particular Tuesday, though, I had no engagements when, around 9, the phone rang, and I was greeted by the crisp and anxious tones of Hannah Croydon, a course coordinator and frequent guest of my telephone line’s hospitality.
“Himmelreich’s had an accident. Hit by a bus. Can you take his class today?”
I delayed for a moment, making quite some show of checking my diary’s snowy white pages, unmarked by pen and untroubled by appointments.
“I think I should be able to squeeze that in,” I answered at length with plausible uncertainty. “What’s the course?”
A rustle of pages answered me as the overworked secretary searched through her own labyrinthine schedules. “Noon, sharp. ‘Monsters, Mothers, and Shining Spears: On the raw eroticism of Beowulf’.”
“Ah, excellent. I’ve been working with the text recently,” I glibly remarked; glancing over to my own tattered copy of Beowulf, currently engaged in the noble task of propping open the door to the spare bedroom.
“Don’t be late,” snapped Croydon. This was her characteristically affectionate farewell, and the phone line promptly went dead.
The class was unremarkable save for its size, though even this was not overly surprising: Himmelreich was an exceedingly beloved tutor among the student body by virtue of two crucial attributes - his reputation for setting extraordinarily easy exams, and his habit of making outrageously offensive remarks during class in a thick and readily mimicked Bavarian accent. As such, his classes were invariably popular.
I am not similarly blessed with such Teutonic tones, but nonetheless felt I held my own rather well against the languidly disinterested onslaught of student questions throughout the class; armed as I was with a tattered set of notes mooched off ‘Peaky’ Dawkins many decades prior, and an unerring capability to resolutely refuse to confirm or deny the truth of any single statement. Frankly, it was one of my finer hours.
Toward the end of class, however, I noticed a younger woman arrive, barely in time to catch the last ten minutes or so. Even if it were not for her tardiness, she would have been unhappily distinctive, for her faded hoodie and jeans formed a stark contrast to the trim and proper fashions about her. Courageously, I elected to do absolutely nothing about the issue and was perfectly willing not to delay or reprimand her after class. But, to my surprise, she approached me and asked, with the extraordinarily disinterested drone that has only ever been mastered in the United States of America, “Professor Himmelreich? Brad will see you now.”
Taken aback, I stammered out some response, explaining that I was merely substituting for my esteemed colleague, and that he’d been in an accident.
“So you’re not Himmelreich?” The girl glanced at a clipboard, shook her head, as if denying my own confident assertions of identity. “Well look, mister, it’s worth more than my job to go tell that to my boss. You know Himmelreich, right? Why don’t y’just come along and explain it to Brad yourself?”
My curiosity aroused, I agreed, and was promptly escorted by the apathetic assistant through wood-darkened and celebrated halls and narrow corridors, arriving at a small chamber that I had never before come across. In small, neat lettering, the room’s door proclaimed itself to be the portal to “Guest Conference Room 4.” Sticky-taped below, in far bolder and less tasteful font, was an A4 sheet of paper that proclaimed, “NEW LINE - OXFORD DELEGATION.”
My mysterious escort atwixt liminalities knocked timidly at the door and, without waiting for an answer, opened it a crack, proclaiming, “Professor Himmelreich, sir.” And even as I was forced into this strange new world, my guide (cursed as such creatures ever are to remain stranded, homeless beyond the thresholds to which they escort their charges) fled, leaving me blinking in a white and bright sudden light.
Guest Conference Room 4 was an unremarkable, crowded space, suitable perhaps only for conferences between as few conferees as possible. Its narrow interior was further accentuated by irregular and untidy boxes that had materialised within its unassuming depths, and by an improbably luminescent bulb that left no comfortable shadows in which secrets may be peaceably forgotten.
Further, the room’s very gravity was altered, all things within drawn inexorably toward the massive and domineering presence perched behind an inadequate rosewood desk; a mighty t-shirted creature bedecked in baseball cap, and sandal-shod as was once practiced by the meanest and humblest of monks. With a clarion and rapid drawl, he proclaimed, “Dieter!” as I timidly entered. “Come on in, man! Don’t be shy, ha!”
I sat in the proffered chair, and repeated my explanation concerning my misapprehended identity. Upon hearing this, the American roared “Janice!” In an instant, the door was opened once more, the unwilling assistant summoned as if by an ancient mystic ritual composed for the traversal of the spheres.
“Sir?” she asked, in a voice profoundly neutral.
“This joker says he ain’t Dieter at all!” bellowed Janice’s conjurer. “He says Dieter’s in hospital. You’ve got the wrong damn ding don, Janice!”
“Very good, sir.”
“Make a note of it, and get me Dieter! Pronto!”
“Very good sir,” said Janice once more, and vanished back into her corridor-filled netherworld.
“With all due respect, mister…?” I began cautiously.
“The name’s Brad. Brad Walowski.”
“With all due respect, Mr Walowski, perhaps I might be of assistance?” I ventured. “Professor Himmelreich and I both work in broadly similar fields, and I am meant to be deputising for him today…I assure you, any questions you may have had for him, I am capable of fielding.”
Brad considered my offer for but a moment. “Ah, to hell with it. Tell me, Al. Y’ever heard of Ben Hur?”
I assured Walowski that that film had indeed made its way even as far as the distant rustic town of Oxford.
“Ah, call me Chad,” said Brad. “Anyway, me and my colleagues, we work for a big Hollywood studio, we’re in the business of makin’ major motion pictures. And right now, mister, we’re working on a film with a swell young fellah, a real Spielberg. Right now, we’re working on a Ben Hur 2. More chariots, more war, more Jesus Christ, more everything and the whole shebang, maybe even more film, maybe a whole goddamn trilogy, y’see?” He slapped his fist on the antique desk, perhaps in aid of compelling my sight to see those visions so clearly luminant in his own mind.
“You’re…you’re making a sequel to Ben Hur?”
“What? Don’t be daft, man, a sequel t’Ben Hur? Couldn’t be done! And if it could be done, wouldn’t be worth it, wouldn’t make a damn dime! No, listen up. We’re making a film, or films, based on that swell old book by Mr Tolkien. A film that’ll really respect that artistic vision of the old fella. We’re making The Lord of the hell yeah Rings.”
I choked. “You’re…you’re telling the story of the Red Book of West…erm, I mean, The Lord of the Rings? As a major motion picture?” I asked, hardly able to believe what I was hearing.
In some ways, I suppose it was naïve of me to be surprised. Others had, of course, attempted to tell the story before in various mediums, some rather more catastrophically than others. But the infectious confidence of Brad Walowski had stirred me, had convinced me in but a few short moments that this might be it. That there was real passion behind this endeavour.
“Damn straight we are. And we’re gonna tell it like it’s never been told before! It’ll be sexy, bold, action. Something for the girls and the guys, a real whizzbanger of a flick, all the fat trimmed and the dust cleaned out. A new Lord of the goshdarn Rings, for a new generation, and their parents and kids too, a real swell adventure anyone can enjoy!”
“But also respecting Tolkien’s vision, and the historical facts of the matter?” I asked.
“Damn straight it will. And that’s where you come in, Dieter.”
I saw little point in correcting him.
“See, we need a few boffins and buffs, real eggheads like y’self and your mates, to go through all those swell old books that the Prof used, really get to grips with the real story, the story we wanna tell.”
My heart stopped, the world ended. My vision danced, ecstatic and wild and dangerous. “You mean…you mean to say you’re working from the actual sources? You actually have access to the historical record for this...film?”
“Why sure we do,” said the American, blithely unaware that he had just shaken the very foundation of my world. “We’ll be telling the story as it really was, straight from the source and the heart with none of the fluff or nonsense. Hot, sexy, with drama and comedy and movie stars and big special effects! And we need you to…”
The door swung open yet again, Janice’s flat rhetoric brutally interrupting the conversation. “Sir, you’ve got a call at reception. It’s Him.”
Instantly, Brad Walowski’s face drained of all its colour to a ghastly chalk; no mean feat, considering the lurid multiplicity of hues that had until recently decorated his jowls. “Him?” he asked, Janice confirming the statement with a nod.
With an athletic rapidity seldom seen beyond the achievements of the great Olympians, Walowski sprang from his chair and was past me and at the entrance in but a moment. “Janice’ll see ya out, Dieter,” he said, and was gone, Janice dutifully trailing in his mighty wake and wilfully making no attempt to show me (or even the absent Dieter) out.
I was left, alone and unattended, in Guest Conference Room 4. Stunned and bewildered, I remained paralysed in my seat for a few moments more, before cautiously stirring and finally allowing my eye to be drawn away from the domineering American presence and around the rest of the room.
The desk itself boasted little more than lists of names, incomprehensible schedules, and equally indecipherable jotted notes. It was to the boxes that my wandering eye quickly turned and, hesitant, I reached for one close at hand and opened it. Trapped within that dull cardboard treasure chest, yearning to be freed, were innumerable books, sheets, and folders. Photocopies, all of them, but still. Photocopies of The Sources. Photocopies of jealously guarded ancient histories, for so long set out of sight of mortal view.
I leafed through a few, scarce able to believe what I was seeing, but the wonder soon turned to fear - I did not know how long the brash executive would be gone, or what mood he may be turned to following a phone call with the dreaded Him. In any case, my curiosity was satiated, my desire met. I had, if only briefly, seen copies of the histories of the Elder Days. I rose, in a mind to leave and put this peculiar episode behind me for good.
And stopped. And hesitated. No, my desire had been nearly met, yet it was not yet fulfilled.
I am not proud of what I did next. Though it might be the best thing I ever did in my life.
With trembling hand, I snatched up the document nearest to my reach; a modest tome of satisfying heft. And, greedy ill-gotten treasure in hand, I fled the scene of the crime, my precious spoils clutched tight against my frantic and pounding heart.
*****
I never heard from the Americans again. Nor, when I asked him some weeks later, did the convalescing Professor Dieter Himmelreich. But even if I had, it would have been of little consequence. For I had earned richer reward in that panicked moment of larceny than any Hollywood producer would ever have paid me. I, through strange chance, had claimed for myself an original copy of a genuine History from the very Third Age.
When I returned home late that same afternoon, I could barely wait to fish the incalculably valuable book from my bag. Its front page was bare, nothing more than a catalogue number, and a list of names, each but the most recent scratched out.
W. Disney
Å Ohlmarks
Zimmerman
O’Dell (to fwd. to Ringo)
Boorman
R. Bakshi
Rankin/Bass
P. Jackson
I turned the page, and was greeted with a gorgeous illustration that, despite the cheap and thin sheet of white copier paper it had been reproduced on, leapt out at me, drawing me in to its hidden world. Above it was a title, written in a boldly sure Westron, as well as some smaller notes neatly scribed in Sindarin. Eagerly, I began reading at once.
My Westron was, in 1998, passably good. My Sindarin was less competent and furthermore long neglected, yet I still retained some remnants of it. To my surprise, both were employed frequently in the source, and it quickly became apparent that I had stumbled upon some ancient academic’s work, a fellow scholar who had also seen fit to preserve knowledge and stand firm against the lapping tide of ignorance.
That the work dealt with the matter of the Quest of the Ring was less surprising, for I knew that it was a popular subject among the later scribes. However, its frequent and great divergences from the tale as told in the Red Book were incredible, fantastic, extraordinary. “Too many sources,” McTiernan had told me that night, and now in my hands was one of those very sources.
I knew, at once, that it was my task to transcribe, translate, and publish this work. If I were to justify my gross act of petty theft, it could only be through sharing this stolen gift with the world. I would be no thief, but a bestower. I had a responsibility to take this rare chance and allow it to enter the public eye. I got to work at once.
Curiously, though my Westron was reasonably fine, I quickly found it lacking for the task at hand. The turns of phrase and modes employed by the author were extremely strange to me, and seemed to become ever stranger as the tale progressed. The Sindarin commentary, on the other hand, was easier to parse, for while it was written in a rather more precise and technical matter, it also demonstrated greater consistency in thought and craft. Nonetheless, both frequently frustrated me, and often I was obliged to turn to my colleagues for aid, or to further my own study of those extinct tongues. To this day, I do not count myself among the great interpreters of either Westron or Sindarin, but I like to think myself a rather more proficient speaker of them than I was twenty-three years ago.
However, further frustrations promptly arose to thwart my ambitions. First, as previously mentioned, my long-awaited appointment to a professorship (if only an associate professorship) in the summer of 1999. Then the emigration of my son and his young family to Australia in 2003. Then the death of my beloved Margaret in 2010, to whom this work is dedicated.
Yet even following these hurdles, I found one, surprising obstacle, that forestalled my attempts at publication for over six years. To put it plainly, just as the name of Caesar is synonymous with the Roman Empire, or Cleopatra and Tutankhamen with the glories of Ancient Egypt, so it is that the name of Tolkien has become a figurehead for the study of lost Middle-earth, a familiar banner rising over that vanished era.
As with Caesar and Cleopatra, it is difficult to begrudge Tolkien this feat, for without him we doubtless would still know nothing of that forgotten history, and it is not to be surprising that certain names may come to be especially attached to crucial topics. Yet, as any historian who has ever sought to publish a book concerning Rome will assure you, it is a peculiar frustration when the publishers themselves will insist upon the inclusion of some Caesarean adjective in the book’s title, in order to drive a paltry few extra copies from the shelves of dingy bookstores and into the hands of paying readers.
So it is too with the study of Middle-earth, alas. Any publisher worth their salt will insist upon some Tolkienian connection; a connection I cannot in good faith claim. I owe much of my own personal learning and knowledge to the tutelage of the great professor, but the work before you was not (as far as I know) known to Tolkien, and the translation of it owes little directly to him. So it was that I found myself rejected by publishing house after publishing house.
One or two, in an effort to make a compromise, suggested that I excise the Gondorian scholar’s commentary and present the work not as a serious piece of historical reference, but as an infantile fiction; a fantasy to amuse and delight simple minds for a spell. These suggestions I firmly rebuffed. I abhor intellectual dishonesty, and consider it important that it be clear that this work is a crucial and useful piece of ancient recordry. If it makes little money, I will not be dissatisfied. If it is read by few, I will not be distraught. What is of utmost important to me is that it is presented as originally formulated, for the benefit of those scholars unpracticed in ancient languages, that they may come to know a little more of those antique days.
In 2019, I finally found such a publisher, a small house but with keen academic interests and a willingness to take a risk, and I am both indebted and immensely grateful to Mr Keith Wickingham for his tireless patronage and passion over the last two years. Even with those further delays caused by the ill-timed global pandemic, he has stayed true to my vision, and been of great help in seeing this project through to the finish line. His generosity has enabled me to commit to publication with only modest immediate financial loss, and it is with great delight and no small measure of pride that I now present this, my later life’s work, for the enjoyment and benefit of those few who may be interested in learning more of Middle-earth and its extraordinary history.
Ass. Pr. Alain Lyss, R.I.Y. – Oxford, December 19, 2021
It was Dad’s ambition for decades to make his work on The Trials & Tribulations of Lord Nicthalion Tallow, Hero of the War of the Ring public. Following his peaceful passing in 2022 at the age of 87, and the subsequent collapse of his publishing deal, I wanted to honour this particular wish of his in some way. So, following the lengthy process of assembling and digitising his work (Dad found all such technologies utterly baffling and deeply suspicious), I figured that this website was as good an option as any, and hope the assorted materials the old man devoted so much of his life to are as useful and interesting as he thought they were.
- Charlie Lyss, Cairns, 3.3.24
