Yes
The 1981 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was licensed directly from Allen & Unwin, not the Middle-earth Enterprises
The idea of doing The Lord of the Rings as a dramatized radio serial was the brain-child of Aubrey Singer, the Managing Director of Radio, and the fact that the child was successfully delivered was due almost entirely to Richard Imison, Head of the Drama Script Unit, who fought long and hard to secure the rights to the book and sufficient freedom for the adaptors to work without the intervention of American movie executives who believed they held a kind of sacred trust to ensure that the book wasn't mishandled! Amusingly, however, it was only when the negotiations were complete that it was discovered— to everyone's surprise and some people's embarrassment — that the radio rights were not actually the property of Saul Zaentz at all, but were still owned by George Allen & Unwin!
Brian Sibley. "The Choices of Master Sibley." Mallorn, no. 17, 1981, p. 8.
This radio adaptation also included things from some of Tolkien's other books.
Curiously, perhaps, the 'additions' which appear to have attracted the most criticism were the visit of the Black Riders to Isengard, and the waylaying of Gríma Wormtongue: which just goes to show how many people have yet to read Unfinished Tales! The other major inclusions frcm secondary Tolkien sources (apart from a few small references from The Silmarillion) were an extract from the 'Riddles' episode in The Hobbit, and the poster-poem 'Bilbo's Last Song', which was substituted for the prose description of the passing of the Ring-bearers given in the book. "If details are to added to an already crowded picture," Tolkien told those prospective film-makers in 1958, "they should at least fit the world desert-bed." (Letters, p.272.) This, too, was my belief and motivating principle.
Brian Sibley. "The Choices of Master Sibley." Mallorn, no. 17, 1981, pp. 9-10.
