Since we have little idea what this was really about, it's hard to know the rights and wrongs of the case. It seems very harsh, though, that the authors were, for
whatever reason, forced to withdraw their book at the eleventh hour. From Angela Gardner's own statement, it looks like they went to considerable lengths to accommodate the estate, and it still wasn't enough. It's a bitter and frustrating thing to have one's hard work end up being for nothing.
However, leaving aside the question of whether the Estate has acted like a bully in this case, I'd also like to say that I agree with
Mithalwen on the general principle that there's nothing unethical
per se in withholding information of that kind. I mean, there are times when you could argue that it
is in the public interest for some dead person's private journal (or whatever) to be made public, and that this must override the wishes and rights of that person's heirs. But I think that only applies in certain, very extreme cases.
Mind you, I say this from the perspective of someone who is herself
intensely private– or perhaps "secretive" would be a better word. Or perhaps even "paranoid", if you're feeling really uncharitable.
I mean, I'd hate to think of people dissecting my personal life after I was dead. *shudders* I understand that not everyone feels that way, but anyway, I also find that the petty day-to-day details of a writer's or artist's life (including much of the "dirty laundry") tend to be both fairly uninteresting in themselves, and very limited in the amount of light they cast on his or her work. But then, maybe I'm just jaded from having known too many artists...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by davem
But if its the alternative, & its facts about Tolkien they are attempting to prevent getting out then I think at the very least that morally questionable, even if its legally shiny. Either say nothing, or tell the truth, warts & all.
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Well, that's one of those things you can't really
argue about. You either hold that second statement as a principle, or you don't; I don't. (A difficult maxim to life your life by, anyway... but then I'm sure you don't mean it quite like
that 
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