[William Cloud Hicklin]

The tax bill story has been repeated often in the press- and although the press is notoriously unreliable on these things, I believe the tax bill line appeared in the very accurate story printed in 2001 in The Financial Times, which for the first time (TMK) gave the correct cash consideration and the fact that there were residuals.

The problem which afflicted Tolkien in the late 1960's was that the Ballantine paperbacks and ensuing Tolkien Craze generated royalties vastly beyond anything he had anticipated even in 1962- and *suddenly* exposed him to Surtax. (The Inland Revenue, at least back then, had a nasty habit of 'surprising' you with a bill- calculated on an accrual, not a cash, basis). There was also the fact that Tolkien had been forced in 1968 to make an unplanned move to Bournemouth and buy a very expensive house, which probably consumed most of his liquid cash.