The Guardian has interviewed Christopher Tolkien – via fax – about his dad’s latest book, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which is published today. Younger Tolkien edited the book, just as he did with Children of Hurin, which sold with well on AbeBooks.

“My father left one manuscript, and that was complete; there were no more than a few pages of earlier writings, and all other drafting has disappeared. The manuscript is in good clear handwriting, written out without corrections, and obviously intended to be a final fair copy. A few minor changes were made to it much later,” said Tolkien, who was appointed as his father’s literary executor and has over the past 36 years devoted himself to editing and publishing his father’s unpublished works, including The Silmarillion and a 12-volume History of Middle-Earth. “My ‘editing’ consists very largely of explanation and clarification.”

Tolkien, 84, has lived in France since 1975, where wild rumours have suggested that he guards his property from obsessive fans of his father’s work with a wild boar – a canard he dismissed as nonsense. “In the full form of the story I keep not one, but a whole troop of wild boars, expressly in order to chase off Tolkien fans who are imagined to lurk in the woods that surround my house,” he said. “There are indeed many wild boars in these parts, but I don’t think they would be at all suitable as guardians even if I wanted them.”

I’m glad he’s put that wild boar myth to bed – Tolkien fans can rest easy and, indeed, troupe over to France to hang around outside Christopher’s house.