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Masquerade is a children’s book, published in 1979, written and painted by Kit Williams, which sparked a worldwide treasure hunt by concealing clues to the location of a jewelled golden hare, created and hidden somewhere in Britain by Williams.





In the story, the Moon sets Jack Hare to the task of delivering a gift to her lover, the Sun. Through many adventures and puzzles, Jack finally makes it to the house of the Sun, only to discover that he's lost the gift somewhere along the way. Readers were challenged to follow clues hidden in the painted illustrations and within the text to find the whereabouts of a real jewel-encrusted golden hare. The book proved to be a phenomenon, and thousands of treasure-hunters went looking for the prize.





In March of 1982, Williams announced that a man named Ken Thomas had found the treasure, which had been buried in Ampthill. Six years later, however, Ken Thomas was exposed as a fraud. The man's real name was Dugald Thompson, and his business partner, John Guard, happened to be the new boyfriend of Kit Williams' former girlfriend, Veronica Robertson. Robertson had a vague idea of where the golden hare had been buried, and set Thompson and Guard on the right track to Ampthill without their having had to solve the actual riddle presented in the book. Williams was quite upset by the revelation, but of course, nothing could be done about it at that point. The golden hare was auctioned at Sotheby’s in December 1988, and went for 31,900 pounds to an unknown buyer. The treasure’s whereabouts today are as mysterious as they were during its original interment in the soil of Ampthill.