against falsehood and those who peddle it.â The case, which stretched on for over two years, involved a series of claims made by the Guardian about Aitkenâs relationships with Saudi arms dealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them as their guest in the Ritz Hotel in Paris while he was a government minister. As Aitken knew when he delivered this stirring battle-cry, the key allegations made by the Guardian were all true. He went on to lose the case, which destroyed his reputation and his career.
As the trial unfolded, what amazed the Guardian journalists, who knew he was lying â and what astonished everyone else after his case collapsed â was the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told. Some were necessary to maintain his original lie, but others were told, it seemed, for the sheer thrill of invention. Like Galloway, Aitken was led further and further into deceit by his own pleasure in confabulating. There was another, subtler aspect to Jonathan Aitkenâs lies: like a novelist, he used them to illuminate character. The florid rhetoric of his press conference set the tone for his self-presentation at the trial as a man of oak-like virtue, a patriot beset on all sides by frivolous, malign and bitter critics. The story he told of being chased by journalists wasnât necessary to his case, but it had a clear dramatic purpose: to burnish the portrait he was painting of a dashing and gallant hero.
Aitkenâs case collapsed on 17 June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence that he had lied about his trip to Paris, and presented it to the court. Until then, his charm, fluency and flair for theatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory. The first big dent in the façade of his integrity had been made days before, however, when the unedited rushes of the encounter in Lord North Street were shown to the court. They revealed a very different story. Aitken had indeed been doorstepped that day, but Alexandra Aitken was not with him. The minister walked out of his house alone, got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
The stories invented by confabulating patients arenât entirely random â like Aitkenâs lie, they tend to depict an idealised version of the protagonist, who often stands at the centre of a heroic drama. Unable to admit the truth of their condition or its cause, their stories are told to make metaphorical sense of their predicament. Aikaterini Fotopoulou, a psychiatrist at Kingâs College, London, specialises in the theory and treatment of confabulation. She told me about one of her patients, a nineteen-year-old window-fitter known as RM who had been a passenger in a car that crashed at high-speed. He was left with damage to his brainâs frontal lobes. Six months later, RM had made a strong physical recovery but was disoriented in time, had severe difficulty planning ahead, and had become, according to his friends and family, a more boastful, irritable and emotional person than he was before the accident. He had also become a chronic confabulator. As far as RM was concerned, he had made a full recovery, and during rehabilitation sessions he invented long and complicated stories to explain why he was in a hospital, being attended to by doctors. He rewrote unpleasant events from his past in ways he would have preferred them to have happened: shortly before the accident he had been greatly upset by his parentsâ divorce, yet during therapy he would tell and retell the story of how he had persuaded his parents to stay together after they threatened to separate. RM also told tales of implausible derring-do, in which he would respond to a call of distress from a girlfriend or family member under threat from an anonymous attacker. He would race to the scene at impossible speed and be forced to use violence to subdue or even kill the assailant. At the end the police would arrive, survey the bloody
As the trial unfolded, what amazed the Guardian journalists, who knew he was lying â and what astonished everyone else after his case collapsed â was the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told. Some were necessary to maintain his original lie, but others were told, it seemed, for the sheer thrill of invention. Like Galloway, Aitken was led further and further into deceit by his own pleasure in confabulating. There was another, subtler aspect to Jonathan Aitkenâs lies: like a novelist, he used them to illuminate character. The florid rhetoric of his press conference set the tone for his self-presentation at the trial as a man of oak-like virtue, a patriot beset on all sides by frivolous, malign and bitter critics. The story he told of being chased by journalists wasnât necessary to his case, but it had a clear dramatic purpose: to burnish the portrait he was painting of a dashing and gallant hero.
Aitkenâs case collapsed on 17 June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence that he had lied about his trip to Paris, and presented it to the court. Until then, his charm, fluency and flair for theatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory. The first big dent in the façade of his integrity had been made days before, however, when the unedited rushes of the encounter in Lord North Street were shown to the court. They revealed a very different story. Aitken had indeed been doorstepped that day, but Alexandra Aitken was not with him. The minister walked out of his house alone, got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit.
The stories invented by confabulating patients arenât entirely random â like Aitkenâs lie, they tend to depict an idealised version of the protagonist, who often stands at the centre of a heroic drama. Unable to admit the truth of their condition or its cause, their stories are told to make metaphorical sense of their predicament. Aikaterini Fotopoulou, a psychiatrist at Kingâs College, London, specialises in the theory and treatment of confabulation. She told me about one of her patients, a nineteen-year-old window-fitter known as RM who had been a passenger in a car that crashed at high-speed. He was left with damage to his brainâs frontal lobes. Six months later, RM had made a strong physical recovery but was disoriented in time, had severe difficulty planning ahead, and had become, according to his friends and family, a more boastful, irritable and emotional person than he was before the accident. He had also become a chronic confabulator. As far as RM was concerned, he had made a full recovery, and during rehabilitation sessions he invented long and complicated stories to explain why he was in a hospital, being attended to by doctors. He rewrote unpleasant events from his past in ways he would have preferred them to have happened: shortly before the accident he had been greatly upset by his parentsâ divorce, yet during therapy he would tell and retell the story of how he had persuaded his parents to stay together after they threatened to separate. RM also told tales of implausible derring-do, in which he would respond to a call of distress from a girlfriend or family member under threat from an anonymous attacker. He would race to the scene at impossible speed and be forced to use violence to subdue or even kill the assailant. At the end the police would arrive, survey the bloody
Similar Books
![Good Will Ghost Hunting: Demon Seed [Good Will Ghost Hunting 1] (Siren Publishing Classic)](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/580509/thumbs/152x264/good-will-ghost-hunting-demon-seed-good-will-ghost-hunting-1-siren-publishing-classic.png)
