Bulmer's approach to the material in his possession mystifies me. It destroyed his reputation, and he can't have made much money from selling home-burned CDs on demand, especially as he made little effort to advertise them. Nobody can have benefited from this. It's very sad.

He made a lot of people very upset and angry, and given the level of vitriol against him perhaps the family want nothing to do with the folk world. If so, that too is very sad.

Perhaps in the days when publishing a recording required considerable up-front investment in manufacturing LPs or CDs Bulmer felt the financial risk might have been too great (although some of the material, including Bright Phoebus and the Nic Jones albums, could surely have been released profitably). However nowadays they can be published digitally at very little cost. If the family doesn't want to do it, I'm sure some record labels or the original artists would be interested.

By allowing these to be released his family could at last reap some financial rewards and at the same time restore the family's reputation. Lost recordings, many of considerable artistic merit and historic importance, could be made available to a new audience. Win-win all round.

What a wasted opportunity.