Charles Spencer's book Diana Swan Song etc etc . Thread the second.

You would think…

I don’t think they did though.

Hello 👋 @BasiliskStare , I admit that after the descent of the last thread , I was going to leave you all to it , however…toot , you are correct with no actual verified proof, the interpretation is down to our own bias and already held opinions.
it’s always said that you need both sides of each conversation and then the truth is usually in the middle!
the problem we have is Spencer has waited until many of the people who could correct his narrative are dead or in Charles case unlikely to comment directly……he was stupid to go after Morgan who doesn’t fit either category and is notorious for holding a grudge!

They didn’t for The Salt Path.

They didn’t for The Salt Path

Or Spare

Or spare apparently! , could be untrue but apparently penguin doesn’t fact check , the responsibility is down to the authors….not sure if all publishers do this or it’s unique to them?

I don’t think they’ve bothered too much to fact check and I can kind of understand it with regard to the royal family.

They’re not going to sue. So the worst that happens is a formal statement.

Penguin say “very sorry, he assured us he was there so this was accurate…”

Controversy is good for them as the more people talk about it the better sales are

They dropped a clanger nor fact checking the bit about someone as litigious as Piers Morgan.

I don’t think a grudging apology is enough for anyone - my Nan always said an apology means nowt of it isn’t sincere.

Rather than knobbing about with a superior ‘Earl Spencer apologies for Mr Morgan for this error’ without the team of justification before it.

A ‘Piers, I’m sorry for my error’ would have been far better.

Is PM without fault? No. But I do think he is right to press on this occasion. It is already out there - but it should no longer be sold with that error now that it is known.

@GellerYeller My DD is a lawyer and apparently publishing legal teams look at any liability for the publisher. Not the actual “truth” in a book. That’s down to the author. Spencer wrote the inaccuracies and lawyers don’t look at every utterance. However certain names when mentioned , like Piers Morgan, should have triggered careful reading!

That’s interesting but under libel law it’s not just the originator of the potential libel, it’s anyone who published it.

So if you interview a man and he claims politician A is a sex pest then you publish it in an article A can come after all parties involved - the person who made the claim and the publication that published it.

So I’ve only read the excerpts but for those who have read the rest of the book do you think it lacks a good editor who could have held CS to a higher standard and also helped him with tone so it didn’t just sound like a personal attack piece?

Yes, I would say so.

Half price in my local TG Jones. I was tempted to go in and move the copies to the fiction section, but did not want to soil my hands.

I would have thought, though, that Penguin RH is starting to risk its reputation if it constantly publishes high profile non fiction books with factual errors in them. As we can see here, people often perceive that it is down to the publisher to fact check, so without knowing that this is not the case, it’s possible that confidence in PRH will begin to evaporate. Also, even though it’s not down to the publisher in a legal sense it does somehow seem a bit immoral to just “publish and be damned” when it comes to talking about subjects who are still living 🤷‍♀️

I think the big thing might be - will risking its reputation mean it doesn’t make money?

If it makes more money from trashy bios or memoirs with a few iffy recollections than it does from accurate history books then they might not care.

Yes, but these are getting to be pretty high profile:- The Salt Path, Spare and now Swansong. It’s starting to look a bit obvious that they don’t care about the books they publish playing fast and loose with the truth. Just seems a bit odd 🤷‍♀️

I think if they think that kind of business will make them more money then they’ll not care.

If they end up with 10/12 high profile ones that make them a lot of money each then it might be more worth their while than 20/30 accurate but low selling books.

I’ve edited plenty of academic tomes and my opinion on this is that, in publishing terms, it’s a corner-cutting mess.

In academia we have peer review, often ‘blind’ (ie you don’t know who is commenting on your work). Normally there’s an editor and two peer reviewers giving feedback.

For the kind of ‘pop history’ book that Spencer has produced, I wouldn’t expect peer reviewers to have been deployed but I would expect an expert ‘reader’ to have been hired. It’s not great money, but I did it myself in my own area of specialty as a post-doc and did it diligently.

Is this publisher cutting corners? If not, who was the reader? This book really needed a specialist in modern media - and not necessarily in history nor, dare I say it, archaeology.

Well, at the very least, it needed someone who was alert to the fact that any mud slinging in the direction of one Piers Morgan had better stick 😆

For many of the errors all he needed do was have the manners to let his sisters read it before it went to print.

He could still have made his “not writing by committee” comment, but they would likely have been able to correct a few factual errors for him.

I’m not watching it but Channel 5 is running a “Piers vs Earl Spencer, an Uncensored Special” currently!

I've read a few of his history books - they've been well researched and historically accurate and I've enjoyed reading them. I'm really surprised that a book about his own sister wasn't thoroughly fact checked especially as he describes himself as a historian.

I have enjoyed his history books too, but have felt they've lacked rigour in parts, and I have qyestioned his source use.
However, in this book he just seems to be telling his own version of a story. Too many factual inaccuracies..

Yes, that was an odd, and quite rude comment.

I'm watching it in the background, hmm.

I think Channel 5 has had a Piers Morgan:Uncensored slot on Friday evening for a while, so it's not just because of the current issue.

If I remember correctly it's a roundup of the weekly news on his YouTube channel / streaming services.