Another one bites the dust....

[Mithalwen]

It does have bad reviews and I am a bit dubious since they claim a NEW BOOK book is being prevented when it is merely a reprint. And no doubt a lot of the people concerned are now dead and can't say. I don't thing genuine scholarship will be affected as the law makes provision for that. Prurient curiosity is another thing.. The Bodleian holds an archive and while Tolkien's manuscriptscare open to scholars the family papers are not. Now that suggests to me they may be made available either to some or in the future. It may well be that the next generation at that degree of remove will see things as historical curiosity rather than intensely personal.
Donating family papers to one of the world's foremost libraries is not exactly losing them to the world.

Publishing the private letters of the living without consent is essentially no different to phone hacking and we have seen the trouble that gets people into...