Jonathan Oates used pseudonym to slam rival's books and praise his own

Picture: Jonathan Oates

April 12, 2023

A professor of criminology has confronted a leading historian of the borough of Ealing after he found out that he had been giving him bad reviews under a pseudonym.

David Wilson, Professor Emeritus of Criminology and the founding Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, was concerned about the personal nature of some of comments about his books given by a user registered on Amazon as ‘Junius’ so he decided to launch an investigation.

His detective work led him to identify Dr Jonathan Oates as the culprit. Dr Oates is an acknowledged leading expert on the history of Ealing and has been the borough archivist since 1999. He has written over 20 books and regularly gives talks in the area about the history of the borough.

Junius was the name adopted by a critic of King George III who wrote a series of letters to the Public Advertiser newspaper in London between 1769 and 1772.

Professor Wilson said is quoted in the Sunday Times as saying ‘ “Junius” clearly hated my books. Over the years I’d become used to his scathing one-star reviews appearing on Amazon every time I had a new one published. The anonymous account had become my online nemesis.

‘Just hours after my most recent book, Murder at Home, was released, I noticed a cancerous review from him, warning prospective readers that it was “abysmal — avoid”’.

While the professor accepted that some people may dislike his work, he felt the attacks from Junius had become ad hominem and the consistent one star reviews were potentially impacting his sales. The latest book received over 9,000 reviews most of which were positive giving him an average rating of 4.5 stars.

Junius was scathing about Professor Wilson’s work saying it 'would disgrace an undergraduate dissertation'.

Professor Wilson added, “It was also crushing. No matter how many books you’ve written, you tend to remember the bad reviews, not the favourable ones.”

By looking at his reviews of other authors, many of which were similarly critical , he noticed a series of areas of interests including the Jacobite rebellion, Dick Turpin, the local history of London as well as true crime. From this Professor Wilson was able to determine Junius was probably a historian and, as he signed off his reviews as being from ‘London Middlesex’, he had an idea of his location.

By searching on these terms he found other authors that had interests in these area but Dr Oates had described himself as working in Middlesex.

Professor Wilson decided he had enough evidence to confront his online nemesis and he rang up Ealing Libraries to speak to him.

When he reached Dr Oates on the phone he asked him if he was “the historian who reviews on Amazon using the pseudonym Junius and gives my books one star?”

Professor Wilson says that Dr Oates admitted that he was and apologised. The discussion continued with the professor saying that he was quite happy for fellow historians to contact him directly over factual errors in his work but that it was unethical to review the work of another author on the same topic using a pseudonym.

Professor Wilson continued, “I suggested that his attacks seemed personal rather than professional and that, as a trained historian — he has a PhD from Reading University — he should know better.

“To be fair to Oates, he took all of this on the chin and said that if he couldn’t take it down from the site he’d alter his review to something more balanced and critical rather than personal.

“Later another thought struck me — had Oates perhaps reviewed his own books as Junius? Of course he had. He had given The Second Battle of Preston, 1715 five stars and described it as “detailed and comprehensive”.

Dr Oates was contact by the Sunday Times and he told them. “I am Junius. I suppose I am now unmasked.”

We have asked Dr Oates for comment.