MY VISIT to the breathtakingly beautiful valley of Lauterbrunnen, Tolkien’s inspiration for the valley of Rivendell, has got me dipping back into The Lord of the Rings, a work that I have loved and often reread since I first devoured it in an epic weekend binge as a teenager.

It’s now half a century since that first immersion, and one of the joys of returning to a work that has been part of one’s mental furniture for so long is the way in which the book grows with you, the way each reading reveals more, even in the midst of familiarity, the way the new context in which one reads an old book always reveals new highlights.

So it proved on this occasion. I picked up the thread of the tale in Rivendell, and followed the fellowship as they left that haven, climbed mountains, and descended to the very roots of those mountains through the ruined dwarf kingdom of Moria, and, eventually, emerged, after the terrifying encounter with the Balrog, and Gandalf’s apparent demise, into another locus amoenus: the elf-realm of Lothlorien.

While I was exploring this inner world of the imagination, the news from England was getting worse and worse: the hate-filled rioting, the racist chanting, the calumniating of refugees and asylum-seekers. And then I came to a key moment in Tolkien’s story.

Readers of The Lord Of The Rings will know that there is “history” between the elves and the dwarves, and some hesitation about letting Gimli, the dwarf in the fellowship, across the borders. This comes to a head when Celeborn, the Lord of Lothlorien, almost gives in to the old stereotyping and feuding: “Had I known”, he says, “that the dwarves had stirred up this evil in Moria again I would have forbidden you to pass the northern borders, you and all that went with you.”

Things could have gone very badly at that point but for a moment of sheer grace, an intervention from the Lady Galadriel: “He would be rash indeed who said that thing. . . Do not repent your welcome to the dwarf.” And then she asks Celeborn to imagine how he would feel if his kingdom had been destroyed; if he were a fugitive and exile, would he not also “wish to look upon his ancient home, though it had become an abode of dragons”. And then she looks directly at Gimli and praises his ancient kingdom, naming the places in the dwarvish tongue, not her own language.

Then comes one of the most moving sentences in the whole book: “And the dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.”

There is so much wisdom on offer here: the moral imagination to see things from the other’s perspective, a gracious intervention, eye contact, understanding and praising the other in their own language. Reading this passage amid the reports of those savage outbreaks of wilful misunderstanding, I prayed that a little of the grace and wisdom of the Lady Galadriel might return to England.