Roelf Bolt - The Encyclopaedia of Liars and Deceivers

F or many years, everything on display in Room 46 of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London was fake. From the Roman mosaic floor in reality made by the inmates of a modern womens prison to the Baroque chandeliers that were younger than the visitors. Nothing was what it pretended to be. The fact that I made the effort to visit Room 46 some years ago suggests that, even then, I had an above average fascination for the art of deception.

I have often wracked my brains to try to unearth the cause of this curiosity. I remember that when I was about eight years old, my mother told me about Han Van Meegeren, and that I found it a strange and interesting story that I didnt fully understand. But did that lead to a genuine fascination? I doubt that very much, as there are plenty of convincing examples to prove the opposite. My mother told me about a woman she knew who saw angels in her back garden. Winged anthropoids appearing in a well-off neighbourhood are also strange, interesting and incomprehensible. Yet I never felt the urge to study them closely.

Perhaps my interest in heinous deeds is based on my own experience. I dont think that is very likely either. Deception is endemic to our society. We live in a world that favours achievers, and who can say that they have never bent the truth a little to create that impression? Next to my keyboard lies a leather pen case that I bought some 25 years ago and which has done me good service. In good light I can still make out a few words scratched into the back. Pariochs? Ephors? I can no longer decipher what I should have known back then but didnt consider important enough to learn. On the inside of the flap, concealed amid nonsensical signs designed to distract the attentionof any observant invigilator, I can see the remains of formulae with the help of which I passed my Economic Science II exam. I have never been interested in economic science I, II or whatever number it was. These are the first words I have written on the subject since that exam. As far as I know, economic science has not suffered from the fact that I pretended to possess knowledge that I did not have, but the qualification that I obtained partly as a result of that pretence has helped me to develop into a more or less useful member of society. Let the reader who is without sin in this respect cast the first stone. No, I dont think my fascination with deception has its origins in my own experience.

Whatever it was that made me go to Room 46, it was the first step in a journey of which this book is, for the moment, the last stop. At the exhibition, I thought I recognized a marble Madonna and Child by master sculptor and forger Alceo Dossena, and my companion took a picture of me with it. Back at my desk I studied with pleasure how I had studied the Dossena with pleasure. The grin and the twinkling eyes in the photograph made me realize that I had found something oh dear! which could be the object of that most futile, time-consuming, money-wasting and infuriating pastime: collecting for the sake of it.

What in those early years consisted of little more than keeping the occasional newspaper cutting, evolved into gigabytes of articles and notes and a truckload of books, documentaries, films, court reports, photographs and a small number of cherished objects.

I am pleased to say that writing this book has finally answered the question why? The condition humaine, that impossible to grasp phenomenon that has been driving us all to distraction for centuries, is too great a prey for me. But bring the question back to manageable proportions and this microscopic image will show us something of that universal, fascinating phenomenon: how sentient beings live together.

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth, wrote Jonathan Swift in 1725 (Woolley, 2001). My viewpoint is the exact opposite: I am not a people-person, but I have a soft spot for that animal called man. A people-person writes about the shortcomings of those around him: John does nothing but complain, Peter can only speak in vague terms while Thomas, who has almost no capacity at all to speak in the abstract, is in any case unable to think about himself.

This book does not offer an abstract theoretical treatment of the phenomenon of deception; instead, it comprises only individual cases. The reasoning for this is that individuals have an inherent and imperative habit of comparing themselves with others, whether they like it or not, and I hope to have been able to avoid many Johns, Peters and Thomases since I have been in a position to choose a posteriori from many stories. And I can allow a court of law, a journalist or history to dish out a corrective slap every now and again.

Swifts animal called man is an interesting object. Evolution has endowed him with the capacity to abstract, which makes the species a kind of evolutionary freak. Homo sapiens is most likely the only species capable of preparing itself for many evolutionary battles and is therefore able to at least partially sidestep the process of natural selection. Survival of the fittest? Agriculture, baby food and spectacles took us beyond the evolutionary playing field long ago.