Our friends at the Good Law Project

From Helen Lewis's Atlantic article

'The Arday partisans have seized on the thinnest of straws. Defending his philanthropic record, the Byline Times, a British website that bills itself as offering “what the papers don’t say,” implied that the relevant charities’ huge fundraising capacity made his claims credible. “A Byline Times analysis of the publicly identifiable charities Arday was associated with for two decades found that they had a combined gross income of approximately £1.4 billion to £1.5 billion,” it reported, “putting his £5 million collective fundraising claim at well under 1% of their overall income.” That sensation you can feel is your brain melting out through your ears and trickling down your neck. The same analysis would uphold my claim to have, say, just donated six fighter jets to the U.S. government, because they cost a minuscule fraction of the nearly $1 trillion defense budget. Why would you doubt me?'

I bought some biscuits yesterday and paid VAT on them. I think, using the logic of the Byline Times, I can take credit for all the tax collected by HM's Government and no I'm not issuing refunds. And I've eaten all the biscuits. Dark chocolate ginger, do you blame me?

Someone on X said that it was discussed on Radio 4 this morning where it was claimed that memoirs can be works of fiction 🤔

Did anyone happen to catch the programme?

Can't do a Nitter link (apparently X have sent them a cease and desist letter so it's offline), but I have found the clip:

https://x.com/newsandpics/status/2092909944253124677

It's quite astonishing really. According to the guest on the Radio 4 show, a former editor of Bloomsbury Publishing, autobiographies should be fact-based but memoirs can verge on fiction. Presumably, according to her, making up having had brain rumours or testicular cancer is ok? She said she hasn't read the book, but she knows people who have and they found it very moving. I would assume this is because they thought they claims in it were true.

Emma Barnett, quite rightly, sounds sceptical that people make a distinction between autobiographies and memoirs when it comes to how truthful they are. And the ex-Bloomsbury editor also claims that allowances needs to be made because Jason Arday was autistic. How patronising and ableist.

I think Helen Lewis might be on to something when she says that we have entered a weird post-truth moment in Britain.

Here is the Archive version of Helen Lewis's article

https://archive.ph/U90FF

I think Wings tweeted something about this. I'm not on X so have trouble reading attachments on tweets. I think it was in relation to Sturgeon's memoir.

Zack and Jolyon sitting in a tree

G.r.i.f.t.i.n.g

https://goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/help-the-greens-protect-trans-members/

The way I'm reading it, you bought a million packets of biscuits which is a perfectly reasonable estimate because that represents only a tiny fraction of VAT collected each year, and you aren't sharing them!

https://x.com/michaelgove/status/2092671381099942031

The GLP has announced a "paid-for advertising campaign" to persuade subscribers to the Times, Telegraph, Spectator and Daily Mail to cancel their subscriptions.

I'm enjoying the comedy, but can he really not see that if anything it will boost their subs?

One reply to Gove's twix post is succinct, spot on and very amusing. "Always reassuring when Jolyon takes up the cudgels for the side you want to lose".

https://twitterwebviewer.com/?tweet=2092671381099942031 to see the replies. Hope it works. I usually use nitter but it's been shut down by musk

Jolyon Maugham says 'we are going to take the fight right to the throats of these vile outlets' - announces paid ad campaign to try to reach the subscribers of @DailyMail @Telegraph @thetimes @spectator

And what does Jolyon expect his band of enraged acolytes to do once they have sent him money reach the throats of The Times et. al.?

Close to a call to violence but I guess that he would carefully argue that the call was against the institution rather than the people. I'm not sure that the journalists working at these newspapers would see it that way.

This has just made me laugh like a drain: https://x.com/thesundaysport/status/2092903383074062468

The Sunday Sport: "Proud to know what a woman is - since 1986"
😂

We are in strange times with unforeseen bedfellows.

Jolyon "Your Cuntry Needs You" Maugham seemingly has never heard of Barbra Streisand.

From the Helen Lewis article:

““For some of Arday’s supporters, acknowledging that any of the media scrutiny was justified has become tantamount to siding with his “killers.” He is instead a martyr—the victim of a “lynching”—and the inconvenient fact of his fabulism must be tidied away from the virtual shrine.

This is an emotional position rather than a rational one, and its very indefensibility makes it a greater demonstration of tribal loyalty. Insisting that the academic was completely innocent, in the face of all the evidence, sends a strong social signal that you hate the right-wing media and care about racism.”

It's fascinating that the same insight explains both Trump and progressive politics, and I feel very naive to have thought back in 2016 that people just needed to be made aware of facts.

He was pretty angry with The Guardian, too, but is that exempt from the new paid ad crusade?

I'm getting very confused about the state of tribalism at the moment: I am a leftie so the guardian is my tribe but I am gender critical so the guardian isn't my tribe but Jolyon is angry with the guardian even though it is his tribe so perhaps the guardian is now my tribe because I'm not in Jolyon's tribe, but I was in Jolyon's tribe when he was just part of the anti-Brexit tribe.

What a time to be alive. Jolyon has me agreeing with Michael Gove!

Im tempted to sub to all on the naughty list.

I already have a Times sub, but am tempted by a Speccie one too now...

There are not many Amazon reviews of That Memoir yet, but I remain hopeful. This is one of the few so far:

5.0 out of 5 starsVerified Purchase
The 21st Centuries Finest Work of Fiction
Reviewed in the United States on 12 August 2026
Jason Arday has outdone himself with this masterwork. Future literary scholars will likely judge that this is the great English novel of the 21st century. By spinning together dozens of stories into one fictional 'life', he has created a truly great work of fiction.

Gove has a comment in the Times about the need for an inquiry (but not the same as Jollyon wants), sharetoken here for anybody who would like to read it (meanwhile try to figure out how I can include some expressive dance sequence into my nitrogen metabolism presentation tomorrow)@
https://www.thetimes.com/article/0ed750a5-5783-4bf8-8d76-9c4135aab3a9?shareToken=f3df8d413479769c27d48f2c5ea4b9f9&ver=article

In fairness the category 'literary non-fiction' - within which literary memoirs sit - has always been acknowledged to allow a degree of artistic licence: the author is making literature from their own life , and life-in-the-raw is not intrinsically literary/artistic.
But (big but), part of the skill (and integrity) of a literary memoirist lies in finding a way to state for the reader the precise balance of reality and aesthetic manipulation. You can do that either in a foreword, or via your skills as a writer in the main text.
People who claim that the category 'memoir' is a licence to dissemble are being deliberately naive about that very basic requirement. Any decent bog standard course in 'literary non-fiction' will make explicit the ethics and techniques of transparently blending truth and artifice

…none of his followers read…… newspapers,so,like all his campaigns it won’t matter in the slightest

Archive for when the token expires: https://archive.ph/rKBpN

I think the idea is that there will be a cap on the number of stories/ articles that can be written about someone. As Helen Lewis points out it's unlikely they'd favour a limit on articles attacking Trump