Dans la Chesterton Review (1) de février/mai 2002, il y a un extrait du livre (2) - apparemment épuisé - de George Sayer (également ami proche et biographe de C. S. Lewis); un passage confirme tes propos :
(...) In my later visits he was nominally hard at work getting The Silmarillion into a form suitable for publication. But after a time I began to wonder how much he really did. I can think of two visits at an interval of a month. On the second I am almost sure that he had the same page open as on the first. I have been told that he spent much of his time reading detective stories. I don’t blame him. (...)
Je recommande la lecture dudit extrait en entier : passionnant, émouvant et instructif...
(1) Téléchargeable gratuitement au format pdf via tolkiensociety.org (305 pages - 4,9 Mb)
L'extrait débute page 188 : "Recollections of J.R.R. Tolkien"
(2) Tolkien: A Celebration, HarperCollins, London, 1999