by Tim Flower
Despite this rebuff - and Forsyth’s denials and attempted assassination of Harry’s character - I still believed in Williegate. I was convinced that Harry was neither a fraudster nor a fantasist and that his was an honest tale told, not only to pay for a dignified death at a time of his choosing, but to exorcise demons he had wrestled with for most of his life.
I knew my conviction wouldn’t persuade either a producer or a publisher to buy the story; but I wrote it up anyway, just as Harry had told it to me. I then stored the manuscript in the cloud, hoping that an opportunity to publish it and perhaps recover my ten thousand pounds might emerge in the future.
There it remained for over two years until I read that Baroness Falkender had died. My instinct, upon learning this, was to contact the BBC to see if they were now willing to buy Williegate, given that there was no longer a risk of her suing them. However, after retrieving the manuscript and rereading it, I decided to publish it myself.
Although not the best option in terms of recovering my investment, it would ensure that Harry’s story was told in his own words, as I had heard it from him, and the public were left to decide for themselves about the truth of it. It would also allow me to give a first-hand account of the circumstances in which he had come to break his troubled silence after fifty years. But above all, it would enable you to learn about Williegate now, at a time when a top-circulation tabloid is again facilitating a populist propaganda campaign to subvert our democracy.