How Johann Hari plagiarized the Daily Mail

In 2004, Johann Hari interviewed Daily Mail journalist Ann Leslie. In his introductory paragraphs, he explained that he had affection for her, even though he regarded The Mail as 'a Mephistopholean font of evil'.

Curious, because Hari plagiarized enormous chunks of the 'interview' from an article Ann Leslie wrote for The Mail in 1997. The article was published on August 12 1997, and was headlined 'There are roses, foxhounds and schoolgirls in uniform'. Hari used 772 words of this article in his 'interview'. In the case of 227 words, he made it clear he was quoting from something Leslie had written before (although he didn't mention it had been in The Mail), which is remarkably brazen considering he plagiarized a further 545 words from the same article.

With those 545 words, he not only failed to attribute them to any article by Ann Leslie, but he also pretended she had said them directly to him. Here are all the parts of Ann Leslie's 1997 Daily Mail article and the corresponding passages from Johann Hari's 'interview'. I think these passages and the others in interviews with George Michael, Malalai Joya and many others speak for themselves: Johann Hari is a systematic and extensive plagiarist, and has been for years. 

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997:  

'He was my father's bearer, valet, and a man whom I loved more than anyone else after my father. He'd been my father's bearer even before my parents' marriage; taciturn, speaking little English, illiterate, but deeply noble, with the hawk-like face of a man from the legendary North-West Frontier, he and his family - had moved with us all over India and, much later, Pakistan.

Whenever I cut my knee, I ran to Yah Mohammed. When a deadly snake, a black krait, slithered into my nursery and my ayah (Indian nanny) ran screaming from the room, her ankle bracelets chattering in panic, it was Yah Mohammed who calmly killed the krait. 

Yah Mohammed was always there if I was lonely, frightened, or leaving home again, for yet another distant boarding school. 

And it was Yah Mohammed, I later learned, who had rescued me from a friend's garden during what became known as The Great Calcutta Killing, in 1946. The city was burning as Moslems and Hindus slaughtered each other: Yah Mohammed, at great risk to himself, climbed over garden walls and hurried down alleys, carrying the little white missy baba to safety on his spindly back. He was, of course, a Moslem.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

Yet it is not her father who dominates her memories of that time. It is a man called Yah Mohammed, “a man I loved with almost unbearable intensity.” He was her father’s bearer and servant, “taciturn, speaking little English, illiterate, but deeply noble, with the hawk-like face of a man from the legendary North-West Frontier.” Yah and his family moved with the Leslie family all over India and, later, Pakistan.

“Whenever I cut my knee, I ran to Yah Mohammed. When a deadly snake, a black krait, slithered into my nursery and my ayah [Indian nanny] ran screaming from the room, her ankle bracelets chattering in panic, it was Yah Mohammed who calmly killed the krait,” she explains. “Yah Mohammed was always there if I was lonely, frightened, or leaving home again, for yet another distant boarding school. And he was the one, I learned years later, who had rescued me from a friend's garden during what became known as The Great Calcutta Killing, in 1946. The city was burning as Moslems and Hindus slaughtered each other: Yah Mohammed, at great risk to himself, climbed over garden walls and hurried down alleys, carrying the little white missy baba to safety on his spindly back.” 

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997: 

'Even after all these years, I still feel an almost tearful relief that Yah Mohammed was not with us on that particular killing train.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'Even now, her eyes turn watery when she explains how relieved she was that Yah Mohammed was not with her “on that train.”'

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997:   

'The long Indian train clattered and screeched to a halt somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A sudden silence.

And then the screams. My mother clutched me to her, covered my eyes, told me not to be scared, there was nothing to worry about.

And there wasn't: not for us, at least.

Not for a freckled British memsahib and her missy baba, her equally freckled little daughter, sitting alone in the shabby first-class compartment of what was to become one of the 'killing trains' in the world's largest post-war holocaust.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'She draws unusually heavily on her ominpresent cigarette now. She was sitting on a train in her teens and “the long Indian train clattered and screeched to a halt somewhere in the middle of nowhere. A sudden silence. And then I heard the screams. My mother clutched me to her, covered my eyes, told me not to be scared, there was nothing to worry about. And there wasn't: not for us, at least. Not for a freckled British memsahib and her missy baba, her equally freckled little daughter, sitting alone in the shabby first-class compartment of what was to become one of the 'killing trains' in the world's largest post-war holocaust.”'

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997:  

'In an orgy of sectarian bloodletting, up to a million people died and at least 14 million became refugees.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'A million people were murdered that year and 14 million people displaced.'

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997: 

'Why weren't my mother and I killed that dreadful summer afternoon? Because we, the so-called 'colonial oppressors', simply didn't matter any more. We were assumed to be leaving anyway. In fact, we were always treated with extraordinary courtesy, even generosity. We did not need to be ethnically cleansed. 

So we were not the targets of the Sikh jathas - armed bands - who'd ambushed the train. Their targets were Moslems. 

Many years later, when dim memories of horror and fear surfaced in me about 'something horrible happening on a train', my mother told me how, when the train moved again, it was full of blood and bodies, men, women and children, with their throats slit. 

Further bodies lay strewn in the bloody dust alongside the track.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

She and her mother survived “because we simply didn't matter any more. The British were assumed to be leaving anyway. In fact, we were always treated with extraordinary courtesy, even generosity. We did not need to be ethnically cleansed. So we were not the targets of the Sikh jathas [armed bands] who'd ambushed the train. Their targets were Moslems. Many years later, when dim memories of horror and fear surfaced in me about 'something horrible happening on a train', my mother told me how, when the train moved again, it was full of blood and bodies, men, women and children, with their throats slit. Further bodies lay strewn in the bloody dust alongside the track.”

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997: 

'Yah Mohammed at his five-times-a-day prayers. Had this good and noble man been on the train that day, a kirpan dagger would have slit his throat; just another Partition statistic.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'Yah Mohammed would, of course, have been murdered as a Muslim.'  

Perhaps aware that Leslie was appearing almost too articulate in her cigarette-strewn 'quotes', Hari briefly almost abandoned the pretence, first quoting the same article but mentioning that Leslie had written the passage in question rather than having told it to him, and then going on to claim that she parroted parts of this nearly seven-year-old article back at him, 'quoting her piece almost verbatim'. That seems unlikely, putting it mildly. Especially as that particular passage isn't quoted almost verbatim - it's verbatim.

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997: 

'My own Indian idyll came to an end four years after Independence because of a panther and a rabid dog. The panther had streaked out of the mossy woods where I was taking a friend's small Maltese terrier for a walk.

The terrier's lead was dragged from my hand, his little body was never found, and I suddenly felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Not about the panther. Panthers were always eating assorted Fluffs, Fidos and Freddies, the pedigree dogs so beloved by Ooty's British memsahibs, and we all had to be very stiff-upper-lipped about these tiny tragedies.

But I'd recently been bitten by a pariah dog in Charing Cross, the centre of Ooty (and had to endure three weeks of agonising anti-rabies injections.

And I knew that the hungry panther and the rabid dog meant that I would probably now be sent 'Home' - as the British in India always called England - never to live in India again, never to smell woodsmoke in the night villages, never to play with my pet mongoose, never to see the pale gold dust at twilight.

Never to sneak into the servants' compound (forbidden to the chota-sahibs, the missy-babas, the sons and daughter of the Raj) and roast cashew-nuts with them in the courtyard fires. And never to see my parents again except for once a year at most.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'But the greatest betrayal came when her mother sent her away from her beloved India altogether. “My Indian idyll came to an end four years after Independence because of a panther and a rabid dog,” she wrote years later. “The panther had streaked out of the woods where I was taking a friend's small Maltese terrier for a walk. The terrier's lead was dragged from my hand. His little body was never found, and I suddenly felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Not about the panther. Panthers were always eating assorted Fluffs, Fidos and Freddies, the pedigree dogs so beloved by British memsahibs, and we all had to be very stiff-upper-lipped about these tiny tragedies. But I'd recently been bitten by a pariah dog in Charing Cross, near my boarding school, and had to endure three weeks of agonising anti-rabies injections. And I knew that the hungry panther and the rabid dog meant that I would probably now be sent 'Home' - as the British in India always called England - never to live in India again, never to smell woodsmoke in the night villages, never to play with my pet mongoose, never to see the pale gold dust at twilight. Never to sneak into the servants' compound (forbidden to the chota-sahibs, the missy-babas, the sons and daughter of the Raj) and roast cashew-nuts with them in the courtyard fires. And never to see my parents again except for once a year at most.”

Ann Leslie's article in The Daily Mail, 1997: 

'But those schools were in India: now I was going 'Home' into exile. And my heart broke. As it broke for so many who earlier had to leave India, and who never felt truly at home anywhere else again… 

Almost a billion Indians call their land 'Mother India'. As I, in exile, also do.'

Johann Hari's 'interview' with Ann Leslie in The Independent, 2004:

'She looks at me, quoting her piece almost verbatim. “Now I was going 'Home' into exile. And my heart broke. As it broke for so many who earlier had to leave India, and who never felt truly at home anywhere else again. Almost a billion Indians call their land 'Mother India'. As I, in exile, also do.”'

I worked with Guy Walters on this. You can read his excellent analysis of it at the New Statesman. Thanks also to Matthew Turner for the initial alert about this.