Nazgúl Hobbies!

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

We don't know much about the Nazgûl, but one has a name that clearly indicates his hobby: Khamûl the Black Easterling.

Obviously he must have spent a lot of time around muck, and so it's no surprise that in a recently discovered letter Tolkien reveals that he used to run a miniature steam railway. All of that grease, soot and coal dust used to stain him as black as the ace of spades by the end of a day's steaming, but he kept it up just for the smiles on the orclings' faces. This might also explain the black robes. How can we be sure that they were originally black? After all, nobody really got close enough to Khamûl to be able to tell whether that was dye or a complicated patchwork of oil stains. The clue to this lies in a footnote in The History of Middle-Earth vol XIV, in which it is revealed that Khamûl was originally known as 'The Paisley Easterling' before he took up with Sauron.

The Witch-King, on the other hand, prefers the rather cleaner hobby of collecting commemorative spoons. In a lofty garret in Minas Morgul that he uses as a study there is a rack of silver-plated cutlery bearing messages such as "I dropped in to the Fall of Gondolin museum" and "Barad Dûr gift shop (all purchases compulsory)". Such is the terrible private face of evil.