Amazon row don admits:
'It was me'

Updated: 19:00 EDT, 22 April 2010

For a week now, an extraordinary row has had Britain’s academe in turmoil with threats of libel writs and the bloodying of distinguished reputations.

On one side is leading historian and Russian expert Orlando Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, whose barrister wife, Stephanie Palmer, embarrassingly confessed to writing reviews for the Amazon website which praised her husband’s books and trashed those of his rivals.

On the other side are the subjects of the attacks, including Oxford’s professor of Russian history, Robert Service, historical writer Kate Summerscale and former Cambridge fellow Dr Rachel Polonsky.

But now, in an astonishing twist to the saga, I can reveal that the offending reviews on Amazon were not, after all, written by Figes’s wife, Stephanie, herself a Cambridge University law lecturer.

Mea culpa: Orlando Figes has owned up to writing the poison pen reviews himself. His wife had previously claimed she was to blame

In a startling admission, which will put to rest the minds of those attacked — who all feared libel writs were on their way — Figes tells me it was in fact he who posted the anonymous critiques, and not his wife.

‘I take full responsibility,’ he says. ‘I have made some foolish errors and apologise wholeheartedly to all concerned. In particular, I am sorry for the distress I have caused to Rachel Polonsky and Robert Service. I also apologise to my lawyer, to whom I gave incorrect information.’

The extraordinary mea culpa goes on: ‘I am ashamed of my behaviour and don’t entirely understand why I acted as I did. It was stupid. Some of the reviews I now see were small-minded and ungenerous, but they were not intended to harm.’

I understand that Figes’s wife, a mother of twin girls, took the blame for her husband in an effort to protect him.

He continues: ‘I panicked when confronted with an email sent to academics and the Press, and instructed my lawyer without thinking this through rationally.

‘This escalated the situation and brought more pressure on myself by prompting a legal response.

‘My wife loyally tried to save me and protect our family at a moment of intense stress when she was worried about my health. I owe her an unreserved apology.’

However, one good thing has come from the episode. Rachel Polonsky says her book, Molotov’s Magic Lantern, has benefited from the publicity.

‘It reached the top 500, then dropped to about 1,600 on Amazon’s best-seller list. Now it is back to 500 again,’ she tells me.

Party  Pieces... at the book launch for Nicky Haslam’s Sheer Opulence, The Westbury

School woe: Emma Noble at the party

Noble cause: Former model Emma Noble, who went through a bitter divorce from Sir John Major’s son, James, tells me she is struggling to find a secondary school for their son, Harry. 

‘The provision of special-needs schools — specifically for Asperger’s and autism — is very poor in this country,’ she says. ‘I am searching at the moment and am finding it so difficult.’

One option is TreeHouse School in North London, where author Nick Hornby sends his son. ‘I am willing to move anywhere there is a great school,’ she says.

While Emma, 38, admits that she still finds being a single mother tricky, she adds: ‘I am very lucky in that I am able to draw from the people I have known through my life and carve out some kind of career.’

Changing tunes: Flamboyant make­over expert Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is compiling an album of his favourite musical selections. The Popstar To Operastar panellist’s choices range from the 17th-century Italian Domenico Zipoli, through Handel, Bach, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, to the American minimalist composer Philip Glass.

Llewelyn-Bowen, who has returned home from Mauritius after a six-day ash-cloud delay, is sporting a tan so deep that he is more concerned about how he will look on the album cover than how the music will go down.
‘Five days trapped out there meant I have turned myself into a Jacobean sideboard of dark-stained oak,’ he says. 

Clegg over: Royal dressmaker Elizabeth Emanuel got more than she bargained for when her conversation with the Marquess of Worcester strayed into the world of politics.

Speaking before last night’s second debate, Harry Worcester told her: ‘Nick Clegg is ghastly. Just because Clegg won the high-school debate everyone thinks he’s a national hero — a celebrity! I mean, there’s nothing to him.

‘These superficial TV soundbites are what’s wrong with modern politics. Clegg reminds me a bit of a young Tony Blair, but the truth is this stardom has made him more like David Beckham.’

TV gourmand Clarissa Dickson-Wright says she had to watch Jamie Oliver’s show on Andalucia through clenched fingers. 

‘He made howler after howler,’ she tells me. ‘The worst was saying the Romans invented gazpacho — this, even though the tomato didn’t come from the New World until several centuries later. He also said aioli was a Spanish invention — when it actually originated in Marseille.'

So when might we see the former star of Two Fat Ladies back on the small screen? ‘I always said I wouldn’t go back on television until there was a change of government,’ she says. Another reason to vote Tory or LibDem?

Marrying someone nearly four decades younger does marvels for self esteem — just ask the Queen’s millionaire landowner chum Viscount Gage, 76.

Not only has his third wife, Alexandra Templeton, 38, presented him with a baby boy — now seven months old — but she has now insisted he holds an exhibition of his paintings at his 5,000-acre East Sussex estate.

So impressed is art lecturer Alexandra with his efforts that she persuaded him to temporarily remove a Rubens at their stately home, Firle Place, to make room for a painting of her Old Etonian husband’s.

A close friend of Prince Philip, former Coldstream Guards officer Nicholas Gage has been painting as a hobby for years. Gage’s works include a surreal nude which, he explains, was inspired by a train trip to London when his shoe fell off and landed on the railway line.

‘I carried on to London with one shoe,’ he says. ‘Nobody noticed. Or, if they did, they thought it was normal. I thought: “Suppose there was a naked lady everyone pretended not to notice.”’ Quite.

Joan's leading man

Newman fan: Joan Collins

Launching the British Film Institute’s Paul Newman season at the Southbank, Joan Collins recalled the first time she met the star, who was to become a close chum.

‘I had been in Hollywood for just a month or two. I was invited to a friend’s house for a party, and as I walked in sitting there on the sofa was Paul Newman, Marlon Brando and James Dean. What a trio!

‘They were all sitting there in blue jeans and white T-shirts. Paul had his shoes off and was holding a bottle of beer. Although Marlon was probably the sexiest, Jimmy the moodiest and most brooding, to me far and away the most handsome and charismatic was Paul.’

She last saw him when he was 80. When she asked how he was, he replied: ‘Still got a pulse!’

The leaving do for Panorama editor Sandy Smith — now destined for The One Show — was by all accounts a lively affair. Smith’s mobile phone was ‘borrowed’ by Panorama reporter John Sweeney, whose rant against Scientologists is a YouTube favourite.

When it was returned to him, Smith found he had some explaining to do. For his phone had been used to send some amusingly subversive texts, including one to the BBC’s head of news, Helen Boaden, which declared: ‘I think I am in love with you, madam.’

Says a guest: ‘I think he took it in good spirits — though I’m not sure she did!’

PS

Surely Heather Mills hasn’t used up all of the £24.3million she got from Sir Paul McCartney? Mills flew out for a ski trip to Austria — where she was stuck because of the volcanic ash cloud — on no-frills airline Ryanair.

But she won’t be doing it again. ‘Took Ryanair out to Austria, hilarious, vegan almond powder exploded in case over all my clothes, then check-in girl insists I lighten my case,’ she breathlessly posts on Twitter.

‘I explained explosion occurring inside but she was adamant that I lighten my case, suffice to say, almond powder covered Stansted Airport, probably cost more to clean up than the 2 kilo overload, note to self never take Ryanair again.’