The Hobbit,The Inklings And The New Middle Ages.

In December 2012 the first part of a two part adaption of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit will hit our cinema screens with Sir Ian Mckellan reprising his role of Gandalf.The second part will be released the following December.It is nearly nine years now since the last part of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings, The Return Of The King was released. This is quite a long time to go in what has been a successful movie franchise.During this period the attempt to repeat this  with fellow  Inkling C S  Lewis Chronicles Of  Narnia has not been as successful.After an initial imaginative adaption of The Lion,The Witch And The Wardrobe with Tilda Swinton as a memorable witch the series seems to have collapsed.The successor Prince Caspian was not terribly good and the rewriting of the plot of The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader to make it a conventional good versus evil story was a mistake which only alienated fans of the books without gaining a wider audience.There seem to now be no further films in the Narnia pipeline due to copyright problems.Those who wish for further adaptions will have to content themselves for the time being with the excellent BBC TV and Radio versions of the four remaining books.So what is it about the fantasy novels that Tolkien and Lewis produced and read initially in their literary group the Inklings that has lasted into the 21st century and continues to make them as popular as ever?.