[Bêthberry]

Thank you, Angie G, for elaborating on what was your mandate or authorisation. This must indeed be bitter for you, after all your efforts, as well as frustrating for all concerned.

I must say I find this all extremely sad and disconcerting, particularly because I've become more and more impressed with Christopher Tolkien's work as I read through HoMe. Protecting the privacy of a living author is laudable, particularly in our age of paparazzi and mudrakers and personality-driven analysis. Yet once a writer enters the public domain by publishing, he becomes a legitimate study himself. It's just not possible to pretend that we can return to medieval conditions of manuscripts where all that exists is the text and the author is a great unknown.

When will copyright run out in these matters? Apparently later rather than sooner scholarship will come to terms with the writer behind all that pipe smoke.

And by the way, for those curious, nothing I heard in the Oxonmoot session in any way to my mind reflected badly on JRR or other members of the family. Not that I suspect everything was covered there.