Erratum note placed in book after author fooled by “scurrilous forgery”

As David Smith wrote in a recent article in The Observer, “The first question AN Wilson is likely to face at literary festivals for a while will be: ‘How did you fall for it?'”
That’s because Wilson is the recent victim of a hoax letter. A hoax letter that he published in his biography of poet Sir John Betjeman. A hoax letter sent to him by a fellow Betjeman biographer that spells out the following in code: “AN Wilson is a shit.