I did not check my facts as well as I should have and I relayed an urban myth as fact rather than the things you are automatically inclined to believe, it is the things which naturally accord with your prejudices, in fact things which engage your emotions, which you are most inclined to get wrong. In February last year, after the ABC's Media Watch revealed Warby's plagiarism of the Fonda fiction, he stood down as editor of the IPA Review . For Ellis Unplugged , Warby declined to interview Ellis, despite being urged to do so by Anne Brooksbank, Ellis's wife, in order, she said, to correct previous errors on the public record. Warby said he'd based his book on publicly available material. It's such a dashed bore to actually do the rigorous research, to cross-check the facts and, God forbid, interview the subject.
Facts really can get in the way of a good yarn.
Bob Ellis should resist the urge to crow. His error cost his publisher, Random House, more than a million dollars and much public humiliation. They were spared an even bigger payout thanks to the Courier-Mail's political writer, Peter Charlton, who spotted in the page proofs of Goodbye Jerusalem a terrible libel Ellis had made against Bill Hayden. Ellis has never acknowledged Charlton for alerting the publishers. Ah well, as he might say, such is life.