We were talking recently about how clever the Ukrainians had been to call the invading Russian troops "Orcs" even before all the atrocities in the Russian-occupied towns around Kyiv came to light. Then Tina said: "If Putin's troops are Orcs, then he must be Sauron."
You can guess what happened next. We started trying to link other characters in the current drama with other characters from The Lord of the Rings, which many have begun to see as a tract for our times. Frodo was easy: that's Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky -- diminutive, vulnerable but also very brave.
We couldn't figure out who plays Aragorn, but France's newly re-elected president, Emmanuel Marcron, is a dead ringer for Legolas. Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson is one of the more boastful and self-serving dwarves, not Gimli but maybe Bombur.
