Williams had tried to buy it but was outbid, and it has remained unseen in private hands for more than 20 years.

The hare was later bought by a mystery buyer for £31,900 at a Sotheby’s auction in 1988. The riddle was finally solved by two Manchester teachers in 1982, but by then the amulet had been claimed by a searcher who, it emerged, was given the approximate location through a connection with Williams’ former girlfriend. On arriving at the sun, he discovers he has lost the treasure, and it is left to the reader to find it. Williams’ book used 15 detailed paintings to tell the story of Jack Hare, who is charged with carrying a treasure from the moon to the sun. The hare’s trail has been a complicated one since it was buried by Williams in Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire, one night in 1979 in a secret ceremony watched by a celebrity witness, Bamber Gascoigne. The bells jingled and it sparkled in a way I had forgotten.” I had not remembered it being as detailed. “It is wonderful to see it after all these years,” said Williams. The makers of a BBC documentary traced the owner of the golden hare to Egypt after an appeal on Radio 4. Today Williams was back in the public eye, reunited with his handmade amulet for the first time in three decades. The public response was so overwhelming - Williams received more than 100 letters a day for two years - that the publicity-shy author and illustrator became a virtual recluse. Kit Williams’ book sparked the nation’s biggest treasure hunt. It made for an unlikely national obsession: an 18-carat gold, jewel-encrusted hare buried somewhere in Britain, and the fiendishly complicated clues to its secret location contained in a lavishly illustrated children’s story. Public interest in the hunt for Kit Williams’ golden hare led to the sale of 2 million books, but left the author a virtual recluse. Unearthed Again - the Golden Hare that obsessed a Nationģ0 years later, author Kit Williams was reunited with the 18-carat gold hare, the treasure from his book, Masquerade. In full in Bamber Gascoigne’s Quest for the Golden Hare which is out of print. Masquerade prize was auctioned at Sothebys, Him Pounds 1,000 to do all the television Of letters pour in from treasure-hunters.

Masquerade golden hare