The Jason Arday ‘memoir’ that now appears to be more fiction than fact

Earlier this year, shortly after it was announced that the publisher Simon & Schuster had bought the rights to Jason Arday’s memoir, the then professor of sociology of education at Cambridge University gave an interview to The Bookseller. “I always wanted to be a person who flew close to the sun,” Arday mused. “But sometimes I wonder: did I fly too close?” On the evidence of his book – due to be published in the UK on August 27 – and all that has emerged about Arday in recent weeks, the answer is probably yes. Titled Great and Unfortunate Things,...