Ah I should have italicised - I meant the programmes and characters as a whole not the eponymous heroes. I have had the song of the mice of the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ going round my head for about 24 hours now.. and am liable to sing to myself..... and swear in Clanger....
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I was thinking about it last night and I can't help suspecting that loving "Smallfilms" prepared the way for loving Tolkien a few year later. There are a lot of the elements - myths, dragons, heroic deeds of the small, the gentleness of the Shire and a certain melancholia are there....