Yes. There is this 1984 radio interview, conducted by Don Swaim for use on CBS Radio, wherein Kit discusses his youth, his early career, the reaction to Masquerade and some teasing hints on his then-new untitled bee book. He was apparently in America on a press tour promoting the new book, and a reference is made to an American television appearance–anybody on this side of the Atlantic remember Kit on US television? You can hear the interview Click to hear it as an MP3 or RealAudio. I’ve mirrored this locally as an MP3 thanks to Richard Nash.

In 2009, for Masquerade‘s 30th anniversary, the BBC created a radio documentary, The Grand Masquerade, which recalls the history, the hysteria, and features Kit’s first interview about the book in several years. It was aired twice, once on July 14 and once on October 24. I was interviewed for the project and some of my comments made it into the final production. Interestingly, the daughter of the current owner of the hare heard this radio program and later arranged for Kit and the jewel to be reunited — which the BBC documented on video as The Man Behind the Masquerade.

I’ve noted the phrase from the “master riddle” on each painting’s page, and here’s what I mean by that.

The book’s title page contains the clue, “To solve the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes, and find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.” This suggests that eyes are the pointers.

When a line is drawn from the eyes through the longest finger/biggest toe on each creature in every picture in the book, the lines point to the letters on the border, which spells out words. Using this method, the first painting reveals the word “Catherine’s,” the second painting reveals the words “long finger,” and so on. The full phrase is ”Catherine’s long finger over shadows earth buried yellow amulet midday points the hour in light of equinox look you.” The first letter from each word in that phrase spells “Close by Ampthill,” a geographical confirmer. See the Sir Issac Newton painting for the more information on this method.

The solution is described by Kit Williams himself in the paperback edition of Masquerade, while John Rousseau & Mike Barker’s solution is printed in full in Quest for the Golden Hare. Information about both books can be found here.

Each painting features bright red letters around the border of each painting; they’re easy to spot. Many do not immediately notice the border letters with little thorns poking out of their middles. Rearrange the red letters to form one secret word and the barbed letters to form another. These are not related to the master riddle but they do refer to the paintings they surround, so they’re great self-contained puzzles for younger readers.

Kit’s two puzzle books, Masquerade and The Book Without A Name/Untitled, are currently out of print, but you can find used copies in varying conditions on Amazon, Advanced Book Exchange, Bibliofind, and eBay. The small paperback Masquerade: The Complete Book with the Answer Explained is also out of print, and has now started to climb in value.

Intrepid puzzle solver and creator Stephen Parkes offers some tantalizing info for collectors: “Kit released a limited editon of the solution book to Masquerade; it was limited to 1,000 copies, each was bound in royal blue cloth with guilt edging. Each copy was signed and numbered by Kit. [250 of these were reserved for purchase through the Sunday Times.--Dan] Also, I have managed to aquire is the PRE-publishers copy of Untitled; it is the same in every respect as the published copy, except it is a paperback, with a blank white cover and back. The dustjacket is the same also except it says on the back that the competition was to be drawn from the hat from all correct answers received. But we know that to be different from the final produced book.” This hardcover edition of the solution book is the rarest edition of Masquerade, and copies only appear on eBay infrequently. Prices generally start at $250 and go up from there.

A collection of Kit’s work, Out Of One Eye: The Art Of Kit Williams, was published in 1986. It features many pre-Masquerade works from the mid-70s, including triptychs, marquetry, globes, the Orrery, and the “Box” which he used as a calling card in his early days. Every piece features commentary by Kit himself, explaining the work and its original context. Once again I recommend Amazon, Advanced Book Exchange, Bibliofind, and eBay.

Kit’s most recent book, Engines of Ingenuity, was published in 2001 (2002 in the US). I bought the book happily expecting “just artwork.” However, the presentation of that artwork certainly is cryptic and, in some ways, oddly familiar. No mere picture book, the images (paintings, photographs, wood inlays, metalworking) are loosely tied together through what’s essentially half a story–and of course, the missing half does leave the reader wondering. The narrative is about inventors and how they come upon their ideas (or vice versa), so the theme of intellectual curiosity is prevalent throughout. You can order a hardcover edition directly from Gingko Press, you can get it as a paperback from Amazon US or Amazon UK. You’ll also want to check out the interview with Kit that the publisher posted on its website. The editor’s note at the end is interesting–it says Kit only exhibits his works once a year “in his own studio.”

There’s one other book worth mentioning, in that it wasn’t written by Kit, but rather about him. As the witness for the jewel’s burial, British historian and television presenter Bamber Gascoigne was the only other person who knew the secrets of Masquerade during the hunt. As a result, he was uniquely qualified to write a post-mortem about the whole Masquerade phenomenon; his Quest for the Golden Hare is an absolute must-read for anyone wants a serious deep dive. The book details not only the complete solution and every riddle in the text, but also tells about Kit’s own background, exactly how he constructed the riddle and how it evolved, what happened when the world submitted to “lagomania.” Bamber also takes a close look at a handful of the millions of lives the book affected–some for the better, a few for the terrifyingly worse. It’s the definitive history of Masquerade, and I recommend it extremely highly. You can find used copies at Amazon, Advanced Book Exchange, Bibliofind, and eBay.

Kit’s works are still handled by The Portal Gallery in London, although folks have written in to suggest that he rarely displays there any more. “Kit apparently now works only to commission but he also opens up his studio once a year to the public for one week only to display recent works,” says Toby Malcolm. “You can get an invite by writing to Kit via the Portal Gallery who are still more than happy to forward mail to him.” If you want to comission Kit, expect to pay a lot for his custom creation!

Works that have already been sold (as many, if not all, of the Masquerade paintings were) are sometimes auctioned off through Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Expect to pay even more. (thanks to Toby Malcolm for that).

Unfortunately, there are no prints currently available of Kit’s paintings–I think we’d all love to buy poster-sized reproductions of some of Kit’s Masquerade artwork! However, there was a small promotional poster made of measuring roughly 16″ x 18″. These were apparently only released in the UK and sometimes show up on eBay (that’s where I got mine), often as a bundle with the book. More interestingly, Anthony Greenwood writes in to say, “My wife has a print of one of his paintings – she acquired this when she went to see an exhibition of his works at the Harris Library in Preston, Lancashire. Kit Williams was present at the exhibition and he signed and dated the print. My wife then had it mounted on a wooden board. The picture depicts a lady asleep in the grass with flowers growing out of her, a comb lies near her head; in the background there are undulating fields. Besides several bees, there is also a hidden elephant in the background.” Kit fans will recognize this as “The Death of Spring” from Untitled. I have no idea how many of these were made or what they would be worth now, but clearly, they exist, so…happy hunting.

Kate Owen reports that the calendar contains 12 of the book’s paintings and new riddles, but those riddles do not have any bearing on the book’s ultimate solution (in other words, if you missed the calendar, you didn’t miss part of the main hunt). One such riddle, graciously typed in by Kate:

There came four men from out the wood
Their way was straight and their strength was good
Then over a bridge the four men ran
To come together as one man
There came a horse without a bone
That made the four men whine and moan
Wood and men and bridge are all but one
Put them together and you’ll find my riddle is undone.
You’re welcome to take a stab at it; she sent me the answer too.

Most often he expressed relief that the whole ordeal was over, and as you’ll see in the following FAQ entries, a certain amount of regret and sorrow. However, when the Sunday Times printed the solution, Kit wrote the following introduction (supplied to the site by James McLaughlin):

THE QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN HARE THAT MADE MY WORLD TURN CRAZY
If I was to spend two years on the 16 paintings for Masquerade I wanted them to mean something. I recalled how, as a child, I had come across ‘treasure hunts’ in which the puzzles were not exciting nor the treasure worth finding. So I decided to make a real treasure, of gold, bury it in the ground and paint real puzzles to lead people to it. The key was to be Catherine of Aragon’s cross at Ampthill, near Bedford, casting a shadow like the pointer of a sundial: near it is an inscribed stone that bears the words ‘The earth is full of thy riches…’
When the book was published the world went crazy. People seized on all the clues I had put in the paintings and lots I hadn’t. Some found their gardens invaded because of a chance resemblance to those in the paintings; others mounted bizarre night expeditions in distant parks; one man came from Switzerland and ended up on a cliff-face in Cornwall; and muddy people with spades kept turning up at my door. None of them found the secret. Even the man who finally unearthed my golden hare had not fully solved the riddle. So for all those who tried in vain, the full solution is provided this week in the paperback Masquerade, exclusively previewed in THE SUNDAY TIMES today.
Kit Williams

There are a few more comments by Kit about the solution in another Sunday Times article, which contains a biographical profile of kit and is therefore located on the About Kit page.

In short, yes. It’s true in that the person who won didn’t actually solve the book’s master riddle, but instead used ancillary clues and personal information about Kit to determine the burial place. Chris Cole has been kind enough to send me this sad story from the London Times, dated December 11, 1988:

HEADLINE: Unmasked: the Masquerade ‘con’
BYLINE: BARRIE PENROSE and JOHN DAVISON
KIT WILLIAMS, author of Masquerade, the best-selling treasure hunt book, last night conceded for the first time that he had been ‘conned’, along with the thousands of enthusiasts who had chased its prize, an elusive golden hare.

The hare, set with five precious stones, sold for Pounds 31,900 at Sotheby’s last week, six years after it was found in a Bedfordshire park by a shadowy businessman calling himself Ken Thomas. The discovery brought to an end two-and-a-half years of frantic activity that saw the book sell more than 1m copies and readers scour its pages, and the British countryside, for clues.

Williams says that he has always had reservations about the find. Now new evidence, obtained by The Sunday Times, has convinced him that there was a complex plot to find the hare involving a former girlfriend of his, late-night digs with metal detectors, and even militant animal rights groups.

‘This tarnishes Masquerade and I’m shocked by what has emerged, ‘ Williams said last night. ‘I feel a deep sense of responsibility to all those many people who were genuinely looking for it. Although I didn’t know it, it was a skeleton in my cupboard and I’m relieved it has come out.’

The plot revolves around Veronica Robertson, the girlfriend with whom Williams was living when he thought up the idea for Masquerade, had it published and saw the first flood of letters pour in from treasure-hunters.

While admitting to questioning Williams over some of the 30,000 letters, she denies that she ever knew, or wanted to know, where the hare was hidden.

But The Sunday Times has discovered that less than a year after leaving Williams she was out searching Ampthill Park, where it was buried, in the dead of night with metal detectors.

The man who organised those trips was John Guard, with whom she was then living. At the time, it has emerged, he was the business partner of Dugald Thompson, the real name of ‘Ken Thomas’ who was later to find the hare.

Robertson said last week that from the first time she met Guard he was interested in her connection with Williams, and that he introduced her to Thompson so that he could question her about the jewel’s whereabouts. She now concedes that it was she who pointed Thompson towards Ampthill, where she had often visited Williams in the early 1970s.

At the same time Guard had persuaded her to join him in looking for the hare, with the suggestion that the takings could be given to militant animal rights groups, of which she was an active supporter.

Soon afterwards Guard enlisted the help of Eric Compton, 60, and his son Richard, metal detector enthusiasts, on the first of seven searches at Ampthill.

‘We got there about midnight and worked until daylight, ‘ said Compton, a civil servant. ‘They told me the hare would be sent to a store in Texas and the money would go to animal rights.’

He confirms that Robertson was there, but did not say anything. She took with her a copy of the hare’s casket, given to her as a present by Williams.

Compton also said that Guard had offered him Pounds 1,000 to do all the television interviews after the hare was found; but, worried about his reputation, he pulled out.

Robertson will only say that she ‘cannot remember’ if she went on the dig: ‘I don’t say they’re liars. But my mind is now blank.’ She does, however, admit that when the hare was found it was Guard who told her that ‘Ken Thomas’ was Thompson.

‘It was mind-boggling. I was very worried that the link might be made, ‘ said Robertson. She has written to Williams, apologising for the embarrassment he will suffer.

When approached last week, Guard initially denied knowing Thompson at all, but after being shown company documents that carried both their names he changed his story, saying that he had never searched for the hare.

In 1982, however, he told the Bedfordshire on Sunday newspaper, using the name ‘Mike’, that he knew where the hare was and would find it.

Thompson, who after his discovery appeared on television and in The Sunday Times heavily disguised, denies Guard’s involvement with the find, saying that only his girlfriend had helped him dig. ‘At no time did I know he had been looking or digging for the hare up there.’

But in 1982 he told The Sunday Times that he found the hare helped by another man, whom he refused to name.

Thompson’s story then was that he had been pointed to Ampthill by reading that Williams had once lived nearby. He was attracted to the exact spot, he said, when his dog ‘ran off to have a wee’ a few yards from a stone cross, which held the vital clue.

Thompson used the hare as security to set up a computer-game company which met financial problems. Last week’s sale was on behalf of the liquidator.

Williams said: ‘I never really believed that he had solved the puzzle, but I had no proof. This new evidence convinces me.

‘They knew roughly where the hare was, they were willing to pay two men Pounds 1,000 to find it. They had worked out who would be the front man with the press, and they knew where they would dispose of it in the USA.

‘I have tried to think why Veronica would get involved, as she was not interested in money. The only thing she would do it for would be animal rights groups. It now seems that someone masterminded the plot. It did not happen by accident.’

So that, more or less, was that….until I received the following e-mail from Frank Branston, who offers this fascinating first-hand account:
“Further information to add to the truth about how the Masquerade masquerade was uncovered.
“It wasn’t the Sunday Times which uncovered the truth about how the Masquerade hare was found, but a local paper, Bedfordshire on Sunday, and more specifically, me, Frank Branston, the then editor, and now Mayor of Bedford. My family controls Bedfordshire on Sunday, widely known as BoS.

“John Guard, the associate of Dugald Thompson alias Ken Thomas, alleged finder of the hare, worked for me as a sales rep. One day he came into my office and asked what I would do about it if he found the hare. I said, of course, that I would run it as a story. After a bit of chat I asked him if he had found it. He said he knew where it was. Asked how he knew, he said: ‘You know my girl friend Ronnie (Veronica) Roberts used to be Kit Williams girlfriend, she’s told me enough to work it out.’ I asked why he didn’t get it, then, and he said the actual point was marked by the position of a shadow at dawn on the summer solstice.

“Had it not been for the Roberts connection (which I knew to be true) I would have dismissed it as fantasy. A couple of times thereafter I asked if he had found the hare but he screwed up his face and said it was more difficult than it seemed.

“A year or so later, the hare was found allegedly by a dog. Guard was, by this time, no longer working for me. I tracked him down and asked him if he had got the hare and he said: ‘No. what a bummer.’

“There were enough clues in the Sunday Times report to indicate that Ken Thomas was local and he used a Bedford solicitor. I tried to find out his name from them without success and tried the name of John Guard on Simon Freeman, the Sunday Times reporter who wrote the ‘hare discovered’ story and whom I knew slightly, but drew a blank. I gave up, but didn’t forget the story.

“Years later, in 1988, I think, I read a paragraph in The Observer that the hare was about to be sold to cover the debts of a company called Haresoft which had been set up to exploit the hare in a videogame but which had gone bust. The next day I got the company details of Haresoft and found the name Dugald Thompson living in Bolnhurst, a village north of Bedford. Listed amongst his other directorships (maybe the only one) was a company called Clayprint. This I knew to be a company set up by Guard. Bingo! the connection was made.

“I got a reporter to go and see Thompson at the same time as I went to see Guard. He didn’t exactly admit it, nor did he exactly deny it at first, but eventually he said that Kit Williams had visited Ronnie Roberts, who was by then living in Bedford, the night he and Bamber Gascoigne had buried the hare and told her about it. Guard had persuaded Ronnie to give him the information on the basis that he would give any money he made to animal charities (both he and Ronnie Roberts were fanatical vegetarians and anti-animal exploitation). Guard said: ‘In the end, the only people to make any money out of it were the banks.’ The reporter who went to see Thompson did not get much out of him but I felt we had enough. We led on the story under the suitable heading ‘Masquerade.’ The Sunday Times bought the story but reneged on its promise to credit BoS with breaking it.

“A week after we published, a local metal detector hobbyist called to tell me how John Guard had taken him several times to the cross to try and unearth the cross but had failed (Kit Williams had encased it in clay to defeat metal detectors).

“A few years later, Guard died of drink and drugs in the flat where I had interviewed him. He was a weird chap with a chequered history, but I maintained a certain affection for him.

“My guess is that Guard had failed to unearth the hare. He told me he used to regularly inspect the site, and I think one day he saw diggings made by the two academics who actually discovered the solution and realised people were getting close, so hatched the idea with Dugald Thompson of sending to Kit Williams a sketch plan of the solution. As we know, Williams, who received sackfuls of ‘solutions’ was delighted and there was an official unearthing. Guard could not appear as the discoverer because people knew of his connection with Ronnie Roberts, and Thompson used a false name because his connection with Guard was well-enough known for the truth to have come out, as it eventually did in the manner detailed here.”

Dugald Thompson, meanwhile, has rarely spoken about these allegations, but did surface in 2009 to tell the BBC he thinks the current account of things is wrong:

For the first time in three decades and speaking exclusively to BBC Three Counties, the man who found the golden hare says he disputes the widely accepted version of how the hare was discovered.

He has quashed one theory that he sent a crude map of the hare’s location to author Kit Williams, who was relieved that someone had solved the puzzle, and they dug the hare up together.

Dugald Thompson maintained that he found the pendant on his own. However he also said that because of legal reasons, he still can’t reveal the full story about how he discovered its location.

He claims that after the discovery, Kit Williams came to his house, and it was the publisher’s idea for him to appear in disguise and not his.

Here’s hoping he will choose to say more, and we find out what those “legal reasons” are.

Yes. In addition to a few newspaper interviews and some very brief direct quotes in the May 1982 issue of Smithsonian magazine (download a 7MB PDF version of that article here), Harold Benney says he gave an interview on the UK TV show Omnibus in 1982, much of which Paul Harkin transcribed and sent in:

KEN THOMAS: (Referring to the ‘one of six to eight’ clue) It led me to Kimbolton Castle, which is where she lived and died. The next thing I saw was the picture of this little man’s hand – pointing to the date – which is the Vernal Equinox. So, of course, I tried to work out where the Vernal Equinox came in at Kimbolton. And, er, I was having a lot of difficulty until I wrote down another word, which is at the end of the book – ‘culmination’, and this gave me clues to the meridian, and shadows, and high peaks. And then I thought I’d look at it another view and investigate Kit Williams and find out where he lived and areas he’d lived in. And I went to Steppingley and Millbrook and all round that area – couldn’t find anything though that was relevant. And on my way back from there I stopped at Ampthill Park to let the dog go for a run. Now, as you know, there’s two lovely crosses in Ampthill Park and, erm, there’s this stone which indicates, ‘the riches in the earth’, the sign on there.
INTERVIEWER: How did you actually find the stone?

KT: Well, my dog went over and weed against it. I followed him over, and then I turned and looked at the crosses and…things came together. So I investigated one of the crosses, and it turned out to be Kate’s Cross…Catherine’s Cross – apparently she was imprisoned there. And I just transferred all my clues to Ampthill.

KT: I dug rather a large hole, I might add. It was eight foot long, and about two foot six across, and about three foot deep.

INT: A fair amount of work.

KT: Yes, a whole night. A whole night. I told him that someone else had dug twenty-three foot away from the cross out to twenty-five feet, and he said, ‘No, he’s too far away’. And I said, ‘Well, I’m twenty foot’, he said, ‘Well you must be there’.

KT: It took me ages to sort out, erm, the numbers on the football field. They turned out to be atomic numbers, and it tells you to ‘think again’ – so it was all a waste of time.

INT: How do you mean – it tells you to ‘think again’?

KT: Well, when you change the atomic numbers over to the atomic letters – the numbers transfer to letters which make up words, and it’s: “FALSES NOW THINK AGAIN”.

INT: Weren’t you somewhat irritated by that?

KT: All the time, every red herring you find, you do – but I must…other people must be the same.

INT: When you found other people, searching, did you, sort of, chat with them?

KT: Oh no, oh no. No – you keep yourself to yourself.

INT: Fairly competitive?

KT: You’ve got to, yeah. You could give a clue away that would…could be a main clue, and you might not realise.

INT: What has tonight been like – an anticlimax?

KT: It’s been an anticlimax since I found it. Erm, you look for something for fifteen months and when you find it, it’s all over. Er, it’s all gone, hasn’t it? Finished now. So we’ve got to look for another jewel to find. I shall put it in the bank and leave it in safe hands.

INT: And in the end, I suspect you’ll sell it?

KT: Well, I might not. I have children – I might leave it to my children.

INT: Do you think it’ll be worth a lot of money?

KT: Maybe, one day. Depends who wants to buy the thing.

INT: You were lucky, really, weren’t you?

KT: Very lucky. My dog is the one. Without my dog, I don’t think I’d have bothered. If I hadn’t stopped to, er, let him have a look, you know, have a run, and have a wee – might never found it. I’d still be digging at Kimbolton – along with the others.

INT: Did you… did you enjoy the whole process?

KT: Oh yes, very much. On reflection, yes.

INT: But now you don’t like the publicity?

KT: No…no.

No indeed.