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Orlando Figes settles over fake reviews

Orlando Figes

Historian Orlando Figes has agreed to pay damages to two fellow historians, Rachel Polonsky and Robert Service, after Figes wrote fake negative reviews of their work posted on Amazon.com.uk.

At first, Prof Figes’ wife, Stephanie Palmer, a law lecturer at Cambridge University, claimed responsibility for the reviews. But the accusations continued, specifically that Prof Figes wrote them using the pseudonyms “Historian” and “Orlando-Birkbeck.”

Prof Figes, on sick leave since the scandal broke, made matters worse by threatening legal action against colleagues, literary journals, and newspapers — any persons or organizations Figes claimed might have written the reviews. Eventually it emerged that Prof Figes wrote the reviews himself.

According to a Press Association report,

As part of the settlement agreed on Friday, Prof Figes has circulated an apology and retraction in which he accepts that his denial of responsibility for the reviews was false.

He also withdrew any adverse imputations that an email he sent had conveyed against Dr Polonsky and Prof Service, and apologised for instructing his previous solicitor to write to Prof Service threatening libel proceedings for suggesting that he had written the reviews. Prof Figes and his wife also agreed to pay Dr Polonsky and Prof Service damages, and their legal costs, partly on the indemnity basis – the highest rate.

He also gave an undertaking not to repeat the allegations, not to post pseudonymous reviews of their works, and not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage them in their professional capacity.

Prof Figes admitted in a statement on April 23 that he had written the bad reviews. Dr Polonsky’s book, Molotov’s Magic Lantern, was described as “dense” and “pretentious”, with the reviewer adding that it was “the sort of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published”. Prof Service’s book, Comrades, was panned as being “awful”.

In his April statement Prof Figes apologised for the distress he caused Dr Polonsky and Prof Service, and to his lawyer for having given him incorrect information.