Impostors: six kinds of liar
Sarah Burton Viking, 238pp, £15.99
ISBN 0670885746
In this tremendously readable survey of history's great impostors, Sarah Burton casts her subjects as heroes worthy of more than roguish admiration. She need not have tried so hard, because the modern mind is as ready to congratulate the successful liar as his dupes are ready to believe in him - as Jeffrey Archer may testify.
It was not always thus. In 1603, a young monk called Youri Otropyev arrived in Moscow posing as Dimitry, the son of Ivan the Terrible who was thought to have died 13 years earlier. During his short tenure in the Kremlin, he proved himself to be a generous, intelligent and progressive ruler who was singularly opposed to cruelty and violence. His fellow Russians, however, found such conduct quite unacceptable and tied him by the testicles before hurling him to a courtyard 75 feet below. His remains were then placed in a canon and fired in the direction of Poland. As Burton writes: "To the xenophobic, religiously intolerant and generally bloody-minded Muscovites of the time, it was perhaps this even disposition which spoke most forcefully against him being the son of one of history's most barbaric autocrats".
Impostors tended to receive better fates in the past century. An American, Stanley Clifford Weyman, made an entire career out of impersonating military officials. Weyman was exposed several times in the press before editors decided to put him to their own uses. When no journalist was able to procure an interview with the visiting Queen Marie of Romania, the Evening Graphic sent for Weyman. Hours later, the editor was in possession of a full transcript, Queen Marie having believed Weyman to be a secretary of state. Other impostures required more than a gift of the gab, and for all-round fakery no one can beat another American, Ferdinand Waldo Demara - the so-called "Great Impostor". Demara thought that an intelligent man who applied himself could learn to do any job in a matter of months. This was borne out during his performance as a bogus naval surgeon during the Korean war. He never lost a patient, and once he even removed a bullet from a man's heart tissue. He also excelled as a prison psychiatrist, such that the governor of Huntsville prison in Texas pledged that he would re-employ Demara should he resurface with legitimate credentials. The only audience Demara consistently failed to convince was the opposite sex, and he eventually abandoned his only love for fear that she would discover his true identity (and his true failure with it). Burton spends much time examining the psychological background of her subjects; but when Demara was asked to explain his career, he replied: "It's rascality, pure rascality!"
Other impostors had more serious motives, and chief among these are the several women Burton describes who lived as men. Rejecting the explanation that they were simply lesbians, the author argues persuasively that they merely wanted to enjoy the career options denied to women in their day. The most celebrated of these was Dr James Barry, a prodigiously talented physician. As a colonial medical officer in the early 19th century, she campaigned - often to her own detriment - for better conditions in hospitals and pioneered preventative medicine. Throughout her long career, she provoked little suspicion because the thought that a woman could even be capable of doing such a job was too incredible. The discovery of the truth after her death caused much embarrassment, with some claiming to have known all along. The Medical Times and Gazette reported that Barry's physique and absence of hair should have given her away, but added - for what may or may not have been humorous effect - that "the petulance of temper, the unreasoning impulsiveness, the fondness for pets, were in the same direction".
Burton writes at the end of her account that it is a measure of civilisation that lies remain shocking. One would hope this to be inaccurate, given that today a lie is only shocking for the deceived. An aptitude for brazen bullshittery, on the other hand, is revered today as bravery on the battlefield once was. Just ask Ken Livingstone. Because Burton's subjects did little harm and often much good, one need not feel too guilty about enjoying this book hugely.
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