Brian and Hank's abandoned project: the Tom Brown's Schooldays musical

From 1964 to 1966, Brian Bennett and Hank Marvin were working on a musical adaptation of the 1857 semi-autobiographical school novel Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes.

In this article from Beat Monthly, June 1964, Brian talks about the project and how the idea came about:

By this time they were already almost there with the script and had written a couple songs for it too. I want to know more about the so called "nibbles from production companies"...

As of February 1965 the Shadows were still working on the musical. In The Story Of The Shadows it is mentioned that the project was "temporarily shelved" around July of that year, though it comes up again in this article from Beat Instrumental in December 1966, when work was resumed now that the boys had finished writing the music for the Cinderella pantomime.

For a "long-time ambition" of Brian and Hank's that had so much work put into it, to the point it was almost completed, it's a shame that it was quietly dropped with no further mention of it after 1966. 

Probably unrelated pic from the Beat Monthly article. Notebooks on the table...