Author Thomas Kohnstamm said he had accepted free services, contravening company policy, and did not even visit one of the countries he wrote about. Lonely Planet says it has reviewed the books that Mr Kohnstamm contributed to but has so far found no inaccuracies. It also denied that the author's methods were common in travel writing.
Big deal. Nige, at Bryan's
adds:
A recent example was H.R.F.Keating, whose Insepctor Ghote novels were widely praised for their vivid evocation of life in Bombay - even though he'd been writing them for ten years before he set foot in India. There must be many more such examples... Anyone?
Well yes, Nige. Astute readers wil have noticed I'm blogging from
Athek in Western Gobi and that I'm an Eastern Potentate.
Confession time.
Actually I'm Jimmy Hughson from Scunthorpe, married with eight kids, shiftworker at the steelworks and I just wanted a little fantasy in my life. Is that too much to ask? The boss's daughter sneaks me water, every time
her daddy's down the line and I get to use the office computer to blog from. Shhhh - don't tell the wife. The company and the daughter, you see - they're both gonna be all mine.
There - now I've confessed.
This talk of
exotic girls in Russia and cloak and dagger government work is pure
Walter Mitty. Nor am I a
sportscaster. And the rumour that I'm descended to the eleventh generation from
Sir Joseph Banks is pure eyewash - I have no botanic pretentions whatsoever although I do have the Banks nose. Anyway, that was on my mother's side.
Nor was my grandfather Henry Higham,
Cobb & Co. rider from
Blackwood, nor did my family hale from County Cork or even Lancashire. We're white rose anyway, from
Keighley and you can put me to the test on this - I pronounce it "Keith-ley". Nor did we move to Love Lane, Bingley and I never wandered down and played by the
Five Rise Locks, nor once went courting by
Beckfoot Bridge nor do I have family in
Trinity, Jersey.
Now we've got that straight, I'd just like to say I'm a veritable saint compared to
Jason Blair:
Every newspaper, like every bank and every police department, trusts its employees to uphold central principles, and the inquiry found that Mr. Blair repeatedly violated the cardinal tenet of journalism, which is simply truth. His tools of deceit were a cellphone and a laptop computer -- which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts -- as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole.
So that excuses me completely.