Memoirs and Defamation

Posted by Emma Taylor on October 16th, 2019

Sometimes the measure of how powerful you are can be measured in the collective gasp that occurs when you announce you are to release your memoirs. From news in America of Michael Wolff’s  rumours of goings on  White House, to the horrific stories of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers, memoirs can be a dangerous game, and one that defamation of character solicitors are familiar with.

Last month,  the great and the good of Britain - politicians, socialites and media personalities - held their breath as they flicked through the ‘revelations’ from David Cameron’s new Autobiography, ‘For the Record’. The launch coincided with an interview Cameron gave to the Sunday Times: There is the expected attack on Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for their running of the Leave campaign in 2016, the news that he didn’t get on with Priti Patel, and the admission that he smoked a bit of weed at Oxford. Nothing too salacious then, especially considering the last book about Cameron that was released included raucous drinking parties.

How worried should the rich and powerful be about each other’s memoirs? After all, if your memoir passes by without the slightest whiff of controversy, what have you even done?

Here at Taylor Hampton’s solicitors we specialise in media law and have been at the forefront of landmark cases in the field of Defamation. As such, we are as interested as anyone else to see what gossip comes out of Westminster. 

Looking back over the recent history of media law, a good tell-all memoir has taken up many a judge’s valuable time. You can imagine, however, that the discerning author will have defamation of character solicitors pore over their prose, or forewarn those likely to be upset. There is no duty or burden on them to do this however

Controversial material on the whole is something readers are naturally drawn to, and the wide release that many memoirs receive means that there will often be an international challenge for the courts to deal with. As privacy laws and free speech rules vary from country to country, what is common knowledge in one place might be blocked or censored in another.

One famous piece of libel history in the UK is that of the so-called ‘Spycatcher’ case. Spycatcher was a book written by an ex-MI5 officer that pointed fingers at high-ranking individuals investigated for allegedly spying for the KGB, detailed confidential surveillance techniques, and discussed a plan to assassinate the Egyptian president. Naturally the horrified Thatcher administration tried to ban the book, but in the process of issuing the gagging order in England and Wales, forgot about the shared border with Scotland. Often, stopping the flow of information after it is released can be about as effective as wading into the sea and commanding the waves to stop.

That said, courts have been known to withdraw offending books from sale. In addition, once the information has been released, there is the option to sue for damages with a defamation of character lawsuit or an action for privacy. Taylor Hampton is regarded as a leader in obtaining damages in media claims. The phone hacking case of Gulati v MGN, for which the firm acted for four out of the eight claimants, for instance, significantly increased the amount of damages claimants can expect to retrieve from cases where their privacy has been breached and their intimate details aired in public.

While the spilling of gossip is great fun for those not involved, it is often that these memoirs break life long friendships and destroy reputations. In some cases, there is a sense of vindictiveness in getting ‘the last laugh’. Perhaps the most famous memoir from the first world war, Robert Graves’ ‘Goodbye to All That’ ended up terminating all his correspondence with close comrades Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden.

So, if you do find your name connected to a false accusation in the latest celebrity publication, the law does provide you some protection, and you should find a defamation of character attorney. If a piece of writing does you serious harm or is likely to do so, then it is defamatory, and justice is on your side.