The utilization of libel law by teachers to threaten the press has been condemned by a leading literary figure. Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, spoke out against Orlando Figes, the historian and writer, after Figes’s better half admitted to writing a few reviews for Amazon.com, praising her husband’s work and trashing that of his rivals.

After Figes’s legal advisers had charged the TLS of defamation for first raising the issue, Stothard related : “When lecturers start utilizing the same strategies as John Terry or other celebrities to try to kill bonafide press comment on issues of general signification, the intellectual life of this country is seriously compromised. ” 2 centuries after John Keats just about gave up writing poems after a damning review of his first collection was broadcast in Blackwoods mag, an unnamed online review is at the center of this poison-pen scandal. Among the people involved are 12 writers and lecturers, a few professors of history at the UK’s top schools, one distinguished academic counsel, 2 libel barristers, 2 literary mags and a made-up character called Natasha from Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

The tale concerning the poser of the reviews broke last week in the Times Literary Supplement, the scrupulously moral book of book reviews and cultural analysis.

In his back-page notebook, “NB”, James Campbell debated a review that had appeared on Amazon, of Molotov’s Sorcery Lantern by Rachel Polonsky. It was not silly about the book. Actually it gave it a good kicking : “This is the kind of book that makes you wonder why it was ever published… Her writing is so dense and snobbish, itself so tangled in literary allusions, that it’s tough to follow. ” the writer of the review prowled behind the nom de plume of “Historian ” and the secondary identity, “orlando-birkbeck. “

As Campbell indicated, somebody writing under the second name had dealt with other books on Russian subjects, including Comrades by Robert Service, professor of history at St Antony’s University , Oxford, which orlando-birkbeck described as “awful”. A rare sighting of a positive review by this caustic and carping authority was his, or her, assessment ( “Beautifully written … Leaves the reader awed, humbled yet uplifted … A present to us all” ) of The Whisperers by Orlando Figes. Campbell let slip that some online users marvelled if “orlando-birkbeck ” may be the same person as Figes, who teaches Russian studies at Birkbeck Varsity , London. Could he have been getting his own back on Ms Polonski, whose squashing 2002 review ( in the TLS ) of his book Natasha’s Dance charged him of a “cavalier use of sources”? Campbell found such recommendations “implausible ” and was hoping Professor Figes “will let us know they’re mistaken”.

The TLS was printed on Thursday. On Fri. , the Figes story was picked up by the London Review of Books, which made public that “orlando-birkbeck ” had also poo pooed the Claims of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale, which topped the bestseller charts in 2008 and won a prize ( “Oh dear, what the heck were the judges thinking when they gave this book the Samuel Johnson prize? ” “orlando-birkbeck ” wrote ) for which Orlando Figes had been by coincidence shortlisted.