Been to any good conferences lately? I have. In fact, I can honestly say that a meeting in mid-August was one of the most intellectually stimulating (and best organized) conferences I have ever attended, for all that it was largely outside the usual remit of gatherings attended by Nature editors and reporters.

I'm sure you're dying to know about the nature of this remarkable occasion, so I shall not keep you in suspense. The meeting was Tolkien 2005, organized by the Tolkien Society in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings, which, love it or loathe it, is a book whose effects on twentieth-century literature and culture are increasingly appreciated.

The meeting ran for five days at Aston University in Birmingham, UK. It attracted 750 people from many countries, and packed in as many as four concurrent sessions each day, from breakfast until late at night.

The sessions included serious literary discussions on Tolkien's writing and the works that influenced him; his professional work as a philologist interested in Old and Middle English; and the ramifications of his writings for fields as diverse as gender studies and the history of technology.

And, contrary to what you might believe, remarkably few delegates came dressed as Gandalf.

Ringing the changes

Before I went, I had feared that it would be no more than an exercise in self-serving fandom, brooking no criticism of its idol. How wrong I was. The more outré elements were very much in the background, and I was surprised (although I should not have been) by the intellectual calibre and mutual respect of the delegates, whether professional academics or engaged amateurs.

It was as all scientific conferences should be: anyone, down to the merest tyro, was encouraged to ask questions, no matter how silly they might have sounded to the more experienced delegates. Compare that with the frequent scenario in which students are muscled out by the established and highly territorial academic silverbacks (a particular problem at ape-related anthropology meetings).

And although some conferences are now going for the 'bigger is better' approach, I can heartily recommend middling-size conferences such as this one. It was not so big that it split into special-interest subgroups, and not so small that it was simply preaching to the converted.

The delegates took as read their mutual enthusiasm, using it as a base against which they could explore disagreements about Tolkien with vigour, and without fear of damaging one another's intellectual pride. All this fuelled the kind of discussion sessions one dreams of at conferences, but very rarely finds.

So often at conferences the presentation fills up all available discussion time. Is it a deliberate ploy to stifle debate, shoddy presentation, or are moderators not doing their jobs properly? Questions hang unanswered in the air as delegates rush off to another session, and the corridor chat hardly ventures above directions to the nearest toilet.

Shire quality

At Tolkien 2005, talks were read out with a minimum of audiovisual aid: no endless PowerPoint shows, no slides being used as props over which an argument is thinly draped. And the moderators were, like all good wizards, courteous and yet inflexibly stern. What a refreshing change.

Many times I've found myself stuck in a darkened theatre, nodding off before endless presentations of insignificant minutiae, broadcast on unreadable slides by people whose motivations for giving a paper are less to engage the audience than to add a notch to their CV and as a means of obtaining the funds to attend in the first place. The moderator, similarly lulled by this aural morphia, seems powerless to intervene.

Although a few papers at Tolkien 2005 were eccentric (some included passages in Elvish, others were set to music), there were no clunkers. All were entertaining and many genuinely informative. I have to confess to being one of the speakers myself, giving a last-minute unscheduled talk about my recent book, The Science of Middle-earth, when another speaker failed to turn up.

Show and tell

The shared passion of the delegates produced some inspired social events unlike anything ever seen at scientific conferences, although, to be fair, they would have left any tolkienophobe entirely puzzled.

The highlight for me was The Reduced Silmarillion Company, in which Tolkien's prolix prequel to The Lord of the Rings is boiled down to a half-hour of purest slapstick. Just as fun was The Lord of the Goons (billed as an entertainment in which 'the anarchic silliness of The Lord of the Rings meets the mythic depth of The Goon Show'), or so I heard later: the theatre was packed out before I got there.

In short, I came away having learned new things, seen old things in new ways, and made new friends, which has got to be better than Tolkien to myself.