But it's wishful thinking: the Minas Tirith in the book is nothing like that. I saw someone somewhere recently compare Minas Tirith to Byzantium, which seems sound at first glance - a great crossroads of Middle-earth, near the mouth of the Anduin, where the cultures of the north and south meet and mingle.

I'm wondering now if London in Mortal Engines was subconsciously echoing Minas Tirith's seven levels, (consciously I was thinking Breughel's Tower of Babel BUT ON WHEELS.) It seems to me the template on which a whole genre of knock-off fantasy cities has been based - I guess Robert E Howard and people wrote about such places before Tolkien, and perhaps there were cities of equal grandeur on Barsoom, but when concept art threads on Instagram throw up unlikely gold and marble castles built on mountaintops and over waterfalls they always look distinctly Minas Tirithy to me.

But I've read it through LOADS of times and now I'm blogging my latest re-read, so what did he know?Īnd so we come to Minas Tirith, Tower of Guard, citadel of Gondor, seven tiers of fancy white fortifications built against a buttress of Mount Mindolluin, with the Tower of Ecthelion rising a thousand feet above the plain.

'This is not a work which many adults will read through more than once,' claimed the historical novelist Alfred Duggan, reviewing The Lord of the Rings when it was published.

Siege of minas tirith siege of vienna