Alice Sherwood - Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture

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First published by Mudlark 2022

FIRST EDITION

Alice Sherwood 2022

Cover design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Alice Sherwood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Tennessee Homesick Blues Words and Music by Dolly Parton 1984. Reproduced by permission of Velvet Apple Music/Sony Music Publishing, London W1T 3LP

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Source ISBN: 9780008412623

Ebook Edition May 2022 ISBN: 9780008412630

Version: 2022-03-22

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This wise, quirky, funny, wholly original book is an authentic delight. I loved it.

Tim Harford author of How to Make the World Add Up

Beautifully written, hugely readable and completely fascinating a book for smart thinkers everywhere.

Mary Ann Sieghart author of The Authority Gap

Alice Sherwood places authenticity in the dock with a series of brilliantly analysed cases. From soft drinks to malaria tablets, Andy Warhol to Yves Saint Laurent, they are unfailingly compelling and often shocking. I found myself instantly absorbed by a combination of Sherwoods formidable storytelling powers and her wry and psychologically penetrating commentaries.

Philip Mould presenter of Fake or Fortune?

Perhaps at no point in recent history has the real seemed more elusive than it does now when cons, counterfeits and camouflage seem to be everywhere. Deceit is the darker side of intelligence, and this fascinating and hugely entertaining book is a rich guide to the many forms it can take.

Brian Eno

Alice Sherwood is the real deal when it comes to exploring authenticity. Wielding the weapon of story, usually the preserve of telling tales, she takes the reader on a wonderful rollercoaster of a ride to prepare them to recognise whats real and whats illusion.

Marcus du Sautoy Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, and author of Thinking Better

A fascinating and oh-so-cleverly written book about the complexities of creation and creativity, a journey that shifts from Darwin to Warhol in ways you wont expect.

Dylan Jones author of The Wichita Lineman

At a moment of shared perplexity, Alice Sherwoods very clever new book puts our counterfeit culture on trial. Misinformation and truthiness jostle for our attention, technology multiplies doubt, and cyber-intangibles are more valuable than solid treasure. With wit, elegance and well-groomed intellect, Sherwood explains how we can try to reclaim reality.

Stephen Bayley author of Design: Intelligence Made Visible

Authenticity demonstrates that although those who wish to deceive us sometimes seem to have the upper hand, its down to the individual to fight for authenticity.

Eliot Higgins author of We Are Bellingcat

To my father, Archie Sherwood.

I wish youd been here for this.

Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.

Dolly Parton, Tennessee Homesick Blues

Our degrees of freedom are not zero.

Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity

On average, you will be lied to three times within the first ten minutes of meeting someone.

When asked by researchers, you will admit to lying one and a half times a day, unless you are the 45th President of the United States, in which case you will lie twenty-one times a day, but not admit to it.

One in ten of you may not have the father you think you have. Best not to give DNA kits as Christmas presents.

In nature, as in life, there are the copiers and the copied. In the struggle for existence, fraud is almost inevitable. If you want honesty, says the biologist, try physics instead.

There are nine levels of authenticity for an Old Master, according to the auctioneer. Depending on how much of the picture the artist painted, and other factors. But what does it say about authenticity when the Andy Warhol Authentication Board says that a Warhol silkscreen signed, dedicated and dated by him is NOT the work of Andy Warhol?

By this point, on average, 16 per cent of you have started to wonder whether these are facts or wild assertions.

Sources are listed .

Protestant reformer John Calvin observed that there were enough pieces of the True Cross in existence by 1543 to make 300 crosses.

True Cross relics available on eBay today! Click to view details.

It is said that in some places you will find 99 fake Louis Vuittons for every genuine one sold. The famous design was introduced in 1896 as an anti-counterfeiting measure. In a customs raid in France a hundred years later, police recovered enough fake Louis Vuitton fabric to cover 54 tennis courts.

40 per cent of what doctors prescribe will be placebos. Do no harm is the physicians first injunction. On the other hand, a million people worldwide (including 250,000 children) will die this year because the medicines they take are not what they think they are.

Over two hundred million people more than the population of Brazil live, love, do battle, and grow crops in Gielinor, a place that doesnt exist.

Many chatbots are good enough to convince you they are real people. Around 11 million of the 31 million men who signed up for a dating website (tagline: Life is short. Have an affair) didnt realise they were chatting to fembots, and not to the eager available women they imagined.

Only 1 per cent of you have turned so far.

Over 3,500 people come every year from all over the world to Blackpool, Lancashire, to learn to get better at deceiving others. With your patter, sleights of hand, distractions and multiplications, you are my favourite people. You are partly why I started writing this book.

Magicians are the most honest people youll ever meet. They tell you they are going to deceive you, and then they do.

Perhaps thats why Ive always loved them, the paradox of the honest deceiver. Even now, that willing suspension of disbelief returns me to a state of childlike wonder. Magicians take me back to a world wreathed in puffs of smoke, where multicoloured scarves spiral upwards in defiance of gravity, where coins disappear and then reappear, where pink-nosed rabbits emerge cautiously from empty top hats. A world that I understood, even as a child, was both real and not real.