David Doughan's been trying to dig himself out of a hole, after comments he made on the Facebook Christopher Tolkien group...

BH

Some additional tidbits (although it might not be necessary to point out, as I guess most of you here follow Rateliff's blog anyway):

http://sacnoths.blogspot.se/2012/07/rumor.html

John doesn't really add anything. Without putting David Doughan right in it --he basically came right out & said (amongst a whole plethora of people who were basically saying: it's been on the cards for decades, this is no big surprise --but not giving anything more precise) --Christopher finished working on it on January! i.e. implying polishing/readying it for publication. He's backpedalling a little now (which is amusing) --but this & the HC/Amazon "bookmark" suggests something is very much afoot.

BH

Well, the following recollection by Rateliff was entirely unknown to me, and cofirms that The Fall of Arthur at least has been in the plans for a long time:

"I remember Rayner Unwin, when I got to meet with him in 1985, telling me about this as one of the forthcoming projects already in the works, but which wdn't be coming out until some more pressing projects (like the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series, whose third volume I'd just picked up that same day)."

At a Tolkien Society AGM and Dinner in the late 1980s, Rayner Unwin was the after-dinner speaker, and he mentioned this as one of the things they might publish at some point.

- wellinghall