The boundary between a forgery and an homage or honest copy is not always obvious, and some of the great artists have turned their hands to forgery in order to pay the bills.  This talk focuses on great 20th century forgeries, including the man who sold a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goering and the forging of the autobiography of Howard Hughes. The centrepiece is an explanation of the Speaker’s personal role in the great Hitler Diaries forgery.

Jim Williams was born in Oldham, the son of a coal miner and a cotton mill worker and grew up in circumstances that would today be considered poor. However, he had loving parents and benefitted from a good education.

He has a degree in law and sociology and speaks French, German and Spanish and has a smattering of other languages. Since 1970 he’s been a qualified barrister, though he no longer practices. He is a Fellow of the Indian Society of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the founder and a fellow of the Institute of Applied Charlatanry. One of these qualifications is entirely worthless and he leaves you to guess which.