'An opportunity to buy autographs of Tolkien, Voltaire and Tennyson has arisen in Berlin next month. Antiquarian dealer J A Stargardt is holding a sale of 1,200 items at the Kempinski Hotel on 5 and 6 June, including 300 letters and manuscripts by some of Europe's greatest writers. Perusing the catalogue, we see there's a rather dull letter by the poet Algernon Swinburne, in which he frets about cheques and proofs; there's also a grovelling letter from William Makepeace Thackeray, in which he apologises for not having given a friend a ticket to his lecture, and offers her hospitality "of Barmecide victuals". But the star lot must be the letter from JRR Tolkien, written in 1967, in which he reveals his dislike for children's fiction: "I am afraid I cannot help you in the matter of children's books, one, because after a long absence, my own affairs take all of my present limited strength and secondly, because I have never been a lover of books for children and have seldom read any since my childhood." Not even his own?'

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent ... ers-27052012-7791198.html

via http://news.ansible.co.uk/a299.html#07

- wellinghall