Students take part in a “flash mob” inspired by the Game of Thrones television series, the day the final episode of its sixth season aired. Santiago, Chile, 28th June, 2016 ©Esteban Felix/AP/Press Association Images

On Monday, the final episode of the sixth season of Game of Thrones aired. One of the many virtues of the TV series has been the final rehabilitation of the previously patronised genre of fantasy in the eyes of the cultural elite. Though Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Lord of the Rings (and the subsequent, interminable Hobbits) were magnificent, they left many feeling that even Tolkien’s masterpiece of the genre, for all its linguistic erudition and deep roots in Northern European myth, was at heart a jejune taste. Dwarves and elves and walking, talking trees were something for adolescents who with luck should grow out of it and move on to more sophisticated fare.

Back in the 1970s when I was an adolescent, I was very keen on Tolkien—it was hard not to be, if you wanted to be taken seriously in my school’s arty (as opposed to hearty) circles. Carrying around the fat yellow paperback of Lord of the Rings was the pre-eminent badge of intellectual respectability. (Jonathan Coe’s novel, The Rotters’ Club, has an excellent, and very funny, account of this cultural moment. His 1970s’ schoolboy hero forms a band and considers various names: “Minas Tirath” eventually being dropped in favour of “Gandalf’s Pikestaff”.)

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