The credit crunch is, oddly, linked in my mind to Agatha Christie
Not because of any one of her mysteries, but because I first heard of the world of securitisation, deals over ownership of future income streams & such like through an arrangement she came to with the Booker company in the 1960s
In those days the tax system worked to the disadvantage of authors who received their income through advances which were treated as taxable in the year in which they were paid. Thus the tax take was higher than it would be if the money were treated as accruing over the time it took to write the book
Lord Jock Campbell, the Chairman of the Booker group, was keen to diversify away from the company’s dependence on sugar. One idea he came up with was to buy up Agatha Christies copyrights; in return the author received a regular, predictable annual income stream
I believe Ian Fleming did a similar deal
All this was before Lord Campbell had the idea of instituting the Booker prize
