I was getting impatient for news of Melvin Burgess’ memoirs, which we talked about this time last year. Had a little look at his website, which incidentally has a new address (see blogroll). And what do you know? Melvin has hit an obstacle with the law. Read here what he says:
“Then, we had it read for libel – a fairly minor point, so we thought. But it turns out, the book falls foul of the European Human rights Act. This act enshrines the right to free speech, but it also includes – quite rightly – a privacy clause. These two elements of the act have been working their way through our courts, and publishers are currently running scared. In this case, some of the things that I got up to with various boys and girls back in the sixties might not be welcomed in published form by those same boys and girls, who could be anything from carefree grannies and granddads to respectable members of the Rotary Club.”
Suspect this means I may have to wait even longer, and so do you.
Surely he could just give everyone a new name and/or hair colour. That way anyone that recognises any of his… err… characters will know their history. Or is this being too simplistic?
I just thought that was the convention when you wanted to protect a person privacy, but still tell a juicy/ reputation-ruiningly boring story.
Knowing what Melvin is like, I suspect he prefers the direct route of saying what, with whom, where. He’s not ashamed, and can’t see why others would be. That’s my guess.