[davem]

I wonder if there's any chance Calcifer could clarify something in the 'official' statement:

The book in question was presented by ADC as a biography of J R R Tolkien's brother Hilary. However, the publication included numerous personal letters from J R R Tolkien to his brother and from other family members that were reproduced virtually verbatim.

The copyright in these private, unpublished letters belongs to the Tolkien Estate. As the guardian of these rights and of the privacy of the Tolkien family, both of which it takes great care to protect, the Estate quite properly declined permission for the letters to be reproduced in this way.

However, the Estate made clear to ADC that it had no issue with the publication of the book providing the material in question - affecting only 20 pages out of a total of some 300 - was removed.

First they seem to be saying the issue is with the personal letters being reproduced 'virtually verbatim', & that they "declined permission for the letters to be reproduced in this way." So, the issue seems to be the way the material was reproduced....

But then in the following paragraph they state they required 20 pages of material to be removed - ie, not re-written, or the material to be presented in a different way, but for it not to exist in the book at all.

So, in the statement they seem to be saying first the issue was the form the material was presented in, & then to immediately contradict themselves & state that it wasn't the actually the form it was presented in but the material itself that was the issue...

Seems that the issue is actually not the way it was produced at all, whether that was to be verbatim, virtually verbatim, in paraphrase, or in precis, but that it was to be even referred to in any way at all. If that is the case its hardly surprising that authors & publisher felt unable to proceed with the book. Key point around which this whole issue seems to revolve is in the words:

As the guardian of these rights and of the privacy of the Tolkien family, both of which it takes great care to protect

Or, as I've been arguing all along - the Estate is using Copyright law as a quick, cheap & easy way to protect their privacy by preventing the publication of family documents. If a genuine issue of invasion of privacy is involved then privacy laws exist under which this matter could be dealt with, but it seems that the Estate don't feel able to take that route (possibly because the individuals concerned are dead & they wouldn't succeed), so they've resorted to Copyright law as the only option.