Statement to Conference on Modern British History Conference, Launceston, 14 December 2005

About 20 years ago I published a sceptical study of Florence Nightingale. It was well received, went through three printings and remains a standard authority. It was a basic source for the Nightingale entry in the new ODNB: a process with which I had nothing to do.

However, I had infuriated a handful of people who had intellectual and career investments in the old Nightingale hagiographical tradition. They have intermittently attacked me over the last ten years or so in the Times Literary Supplement and on the Internet. Until the last couple of years I ignored them. Then I wrote to the editor of the TLS to correct a gratuitous and wholly misleading onslaught on my scholarship. That letter was not published. I wrote again earlier this year to correct a deliberate misquotation in a TLS review by another of the trio - it appears to have lost members lately - which reversed the meaning of the point I had made. That letter went unpublished. I have put it on the Internet.

Then the new editor of the ODNB published in the TLS an absurd claim from the Nightingale piece in the ODNB citing me as the source with a page reference to my book. I was surprised and I checked. The statement and the page reference are inventions, inserted by someone into the ODNB editorial system. I contacted Dr Goldman, the editor. He apologised and deleted the offending sentence. But he avoided my request that he publish his retraction and editorial amendment in the TLS.

About a fortnight ago Mr Bostridge, one of the campaigners, added an unnecessary coda to a review in the TLS that my various errors in the new ODNB had been corrected in the online version. One can only speculate what this information was in its original form and how Mr Bostridge acquired it. I await developments. Scholarly rows come and go. But the involvement of the ODNB raises larger issues. I trust that my experience is unique. As of 13 February I have not heard from Dr Goldman.

F.B. Smith