The shame of Orlando Figes

[CHIMO]

Today I awoke to find that my fellow academic Orlando Figes had admitted responsibility for anonymous negative reviews of my three most recent books posted on Amazon. It's been quite a fortnight. Last week I heard from Rachel Polonsky, whose book had also been negatively reviewed. The strong suspicion, strengthened by a survey of the Amazon data, was that Figes was the author. I sent out an email about this to leading Russian and European historians without specifically naming who I thought was the culprit. Figes loudly objected, claiming to want to mend relations. Then quietly came the letters threatening legal action, and the assertion that Figes's wife, Stephanie Palmer, had admitted responsibility.

This is a matter that has broad implications for the public interest, as can be seen from the way I've spent my week. I got up last Sunday earlier than usual. Been doing that since the week before when Figes's lawyer started to correspond. Don't know why I thought I would sleep. My wife, Adele, and I went to an afternoon concert in Goring by the Thames where a piece by her composer grandfather, Claude Cover, was played. We could have done, however, without the traffic jam on the way back on the M4. It wasn't until we re-entered the People's Republic of Hackney that the mountain of emails had to be faced again.

I wasn't sure whether I could stand the tension much longer, but at least we didn't seem to have to worry about holding on to our house and home. I had my book to write, a book about agents and commissars in the Russian revolution. Adele escaped to her yoga class on Tuesday – she's been brilliant while all this has been happening. I too needed an escape and went for a run over Walthamstow marshes. Strange absence of the police helicopter, though presumably that was not Iceland's fault. But elder daughter Emma was still stuck in Madrid, which was.

Fellow Sovietologists continued to send in messages of support. This helped to keep me at it. I found it difficult to believe that Stephanie Palmer had written the reviews. Few people whom I knew did. Most were inclined to think it was Figes himself but were scared of him and his legal letters. Anyway, why would any member of the Figes household want to squirt such venom into the Amazon system? Perhaps I was impulsive in raising questions about the anonymous reviews but I just felt that someone had to stand up to a bully. Meanwhile, Emma got back from Madrid. Brava! On Wednesday Adele cooked sea bass for supper and we were joined by younger daughter, Cesca.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/23/figes-shameful-admission

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. It has to be said that "orlando-birkbeck" is hardly anonymous, as an Amazon reviewer name

How many people are there called 'Orlando' associated with Birkbeck College (or any other Birkbeck)? It's bizarre to post anything controversial under a name that would immediately make anyone in the historians' circle think of him.