Themes of The Lord of the Rings This is, according to Shippey, a very modern, 20th-century theme, since in earlier, medieval times, power was considered to "reveal character", not alter it. Shippey mentions Lord Acton's famous statement in 1887, that ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..."" He then goes on to point out authors that were dealing in the same themes of power and corruption at around the same time as Tolkien wrote his work. These authors include George Orwell with "Animal Farm" (1945), William Golding with "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and T. H. White with
A Falcon Flies A Falcon Flies A Falcon Flies is a novel by Wilbur Smith. It was the first in a series of books known as The Ballantyne Novels. The Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970s inspired Smith to research and write a book set in historical Rhodesia. He originally planned it as one novel but it ended up as a trilogy. The book was the best selling novel published in England in 1981. A Falcon Flies is remarkable for its sense of the African wild, grimly informative about the slave trade, and alive with the obsessions and impossible love of its strongminded