Replacing a mountain of lies with a few truths
Poor Orlando Figes, what a terrible fate. The embarrassment of it.
The future of one of Britain’s leading historians was looking increasingly uncertain tonight after he admitted that he was the author of anonymous reviews that praised his own work as “fascinating” and “uplifting” while rubbishing that of his rivals.
On Amazon. Oh dear.
Orlando Figes, one of the stars of contemporary history, had issued a string of legal threats to academic colleagues, literary journals and newspapers that suggested he might have written the reviews posted on Amazon.co.uk.
When challenged about the reviews, Figes’s lawyer initially denied Figes was the author and threatened legal action. In a later statement, Figes blamed them on his wife, the barrister Stephanie Palmer.
Then he said he did it, and he’s fraffly sorry.
[T]he editor of the TLS, Peter Stothard, said the issue of poisonous online reviews needed to be kept in proportion. “There’s nothing new about oversensitive writers, and nothing new about anonymous criticism, both of which have existed since time immemorial. What is new and is regrettable is when historians use the law to stifle debate and to put something in the paper which is untrue.”…As a specialist in Russian history, Figes’s “whole business is replacing a mountain of lies with a few truths”.
It’s a good business, and people who engage in it should try to live up to it.
I read about this, it’s sad that this now defines his career and it’s such a waste. But it’s good that shabby, shabby behaviour is identified as such. Going to law to stifle debate is what the wrong ‘uns do.
When this story broke it made the national news, which I thought OTT for something which would only be interesting to historians and/or bloggers. Service wrote an incredibly precious article about in The Guardian which wasn’t received sympathetically by the commenters. He had something to complain about but wrote like an upmarket Polly Filler. Figes seems to have been quite crazy – it’s the kind of thing disreputable bloggers do, writing praise of themselves under assumed names. Then running to lawyers and trying to pin the blame on his wife – utterly weird.
Service did have a good point at the end.
By the way, I had to look up both Robert Maxwell and Polly Filler!
Oh, I don’t know. Figes could have done worse.
He could have made a career as a politician, and spent his days lobbying himself.
I laughed; all my colleagues laughed. Rich, metropolitan-sophisticate, arrogant, ‘entitled’, self-satisfied, deluded… If only I had the money and the connections to be all those things, I could waste my talent like Figes has.
It is unmistakably funny…