Non-Shakespeare-professor Oliver Kamm is up in arms. The inveterate name-caller is very, very angry about … hang on, I have it here, this can’t be right, let me check… no, that’s correct… a library talk. The London Library, which he is a “big supporter” of, is hosting a discussion of a book he disapproves of, and Mr Kamm is very cross indeed.
Described in The Times as “a specialist commentator”, Mr Kamm has as much expertise in the authorship question as a piece of day-old bacon rind. His specialism is criticizing books he hasn’t read and spreading misinformation about a vital cultural issue he isn’t actually up to speed with.
Nevertheless, he who shouts loudest (and isn’t American) holds sway. Coverage in The Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, The Week, and The Daily Mail all lead and close with Mr Kamm’s profound misunderstandings. The Times’s Giles Coren also weighs in with a humorous dose of received opinion because, ha ha ha, he hasn’t read the book either. Taking Kamm’s opinion on Winkler is like taking a creationist’s opinion on Darwin, but never mind, let’s all pretend we know what’s what because an eloquent man got angry.
Kamm once rang me at my University to pour acid into my ear about the subject of my PhD on the basis that his opinion is more valid than mine because he is A Journalist With The Times 1 former hedge fund manager who has never given it two seconds’ thought. Naturally, since he is An Important Journalist a former hedge fund manager, his flat denial is worth anyone else’s years of deep study.
Mr Kamm seems unaware that he is making himself an example of the “anti-intellectual” sentiment he is so concerned about. This book, already a set text on a Harvard history course called "Historical Controversies", is a well-researched exploration of the history of Shakespeare doubt and its suppression
Nothing is being suppressed, says Mr Kamm. In his complaint to the library, he scoffs at the idea that this subject is taboo while demonstrating the taboo in action by demanding the discussion be cancelled2 comparing the investigation of a historical literary mystery to Holocaust denier and suggesting the Library should include him, a man with no expertise in the subject whatsoever, in the event.3 If established ideas can be so dangerously threatened by a book, might I suggest there is something here worth further exploration? Perhaps in a panel event with the author?
The event, which includes Sir Derek Jacobi and Guardian critic Stephanie Merritt, is sold out.
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Correction. ‘Journalist with the Times’ or some such formulation was what Mr Kamm told me when he phoned me all those years ago, but I have recently learned from a reliable source that this former hedge fund manager (who switched to writing opinion pieces for the Times after the financial crash of 2008) was let go by the Times after he was pursued in the courts for the hectoring and libellous qualities of his “journalism”, a case settled in 2020. Since that time, he and most of his online articles were deleted from the Times website.
Correction. Oliver Kamm has pointed out that he did not ask for the event to be cancelled. Mea Culpa. I started reading his tedious whine and gave up after two paragraphs because it was the same old guff we have all seen before. I have now given it the close reading it didn’t deserve. It seems that much as Mr Kamm would no doubt very much have liked the event to be cancelled, he recognised that he was too late to bolt that particular stable door. He did, however, while chiding the library for hosting the event, ask that they include Emma Smith, a Stratfordian who, like other Stratfordians, knows nothing about the Shakespeare authorship question except that it can be cheerily dismissed with the magic words ‘Heminges and Condell’, or he himself, who knows even less.
I think this new version reflects even more poorly on the man’s behaviour, but in the name of accuracy I am obliged to include it.
Luckily had booked 2 tickets before Mr Kamm's promotion of the event. Certainly hope he has managed to buy a ticket, so he can ask a (short) question if there's anything he wants to know. 😅👍
I dunno, maybe invite Emma Smith as suggested. Or the Kammster. Not really into either of these buttinskys, but give them five minutes just for grins and giggles.