Pride and Plagiarism? TV historian insists not

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that writers should not copy each other’s work. But TV historian Lucy Worsley has been forced to defend herself against claims her new biography of Jane Austen is just a little too similar to an earlier book.

Worsley, right, says she is disappointed by suggestions that her work repeats research by Dr Paula Byrne without properly crediting it.

She insists her book, Jane Austen At Home, was written with ‘integrity, conviction and love’ and that she has not taken anything directly from Byrne’s ‘excellent’ 2013 biography, The Real Jane Austen.

Ms Worsley, 43, issued a denial following a stinging review in Private Eye claiming the most ‘egregious unacknowledged borrowing’ from Byrne’s book. Dr Byrne, who has not read Ms Worsley’s book, said: ‘I think I want to be gracious and say the more books about Jane Austen, the better for Jane Austen. I will wait to see Lucy’s book.’