BBC portrayal of Lewis Carroll as abuser ‘a lie’

The BBC spiced up a documentary on Lewis Carroll and “lied” by including a nude photograph he had purportedly taken of a young girl, it was claimed yesterday by an expert on the author.

The documentary, broadcast in January, was a sham and had an “agenda to indicate that Lewis Carroll was a child abuser”, Edward Wakeling said.

Mr Wakeling told the Hay Festival that he had been in communication with the BBC about the documentary and claimed that he had “managed to stop it being repeated”. The BBC denied this yesterday and said that it stood by the programme and its content.

The documentary, The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, claimed to have discovered a photograph taken by Carroll of Lorina Liddell, the sister of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Mr Wakeling said he had seen the photograph in 1993 and had concluded that it was not taken by the author, nor was it of Lorina.

Numerous biographers have raised questions about Carroll’s purported attraction to children, but Mr Wakeling, who appears in the documentary but says he was never asked about the photograph, has repeatedly defended the author’s reputation.

He said yesterday: “[The BBC] broke their code of conduct. When they had a controversial subject like this they should have checked it out.”