Dr. Brooke Magnanti | |
|---|---|
 Dr. Brooke Magnanti on 7 June 2010 | |
| Born | Brooke Magnanti (1975-11-05)5 November 1975 (age 49) New Port Richey, Florida, US |
| Pen name | Belle de Jour, Taro |
| Occupation | |
| Nationality |
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| Alma mater | Florida State University (BS) Sheffield University (PhD) |
| Notable works | The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl |
| Website | |
| belledejour | |
Brooke Magnanti (born 5 November 1975)[1] is an American-born naturalised British[2] former research scientist, blogger, and writer, who, until her identity was revealed in November 2009, was known by the pen nameBelle de Jour.[3] While completing her doctoral studies, between 2003 and 2004, Magnanti supplemented her income by working as a Londoncall girl known by the working name Taro.[4]
Her diary, published as the anonymous blogBelle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, became increasingly popular as speculation surrounded the identity of Belle de Jour. Remaining anonymous, Magnanti went on to have her experiences published asThe Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2005 andThe Further Adventures of a London Call Girl in 2006. Her first two books were UK top 10 best-sellers in the nonfiction hardback and nonfiction paperback lists.
In 2007 Belle's blogs and books were adapted into a television programme,Secret Diary of a Call Girl starringBillie Piper as Belle, with the real nameHannah Baxter. In November 2009, fearing her real identity was about to come out, Magnanti revealed her real name and occupation as a child health scientist.
She is honoured inBBC's 100 Women in 2013 and 2014.[5][6]
Born inNew Port Richey, United States to an Italian American father andJewish American mother,[7] Magnanti grew up inClearwater, Florida.[7] She graduated from the privateClearwater Central Catholic High School where she was named aNational Merit Scholar in 1992.[8]
She entered university at the age of 16, going on to receive a B.S. in 1996 fromFlorida State University. Relocating to the United Kingdom, Magnanti studied for a master's degree ingenetic epidemiology and PhD ininformatics,epidemiology, andforensic science from theUniversity of Sheffield in England.[9][10]
Magnanti's pseudonym was derived from the 1928 novelBelle de jour byJoseph Kessel and the 1967film of the same name starringCatherine Deneuve, directed byLuis Buñuel. In the film, "Belle de Jour" is an expression translating literally as "daytime beauty", as Deneuve's character frequented the brothel during the daytime, when her husband was absent from home. The expression is adapted from the French phrase "belle de nuit", which translates as "lady of the night", i.e. a prostitute.[11][12]
The weblogBelle de Jour: Diary of a London call girl first appeared in October 2003[12] and won theGuardian newspaper's Best British Weblog 2003, in the second year of the award's existence.[13] There was speculation in the media for several years as to the real identity of the author, whether Belle really was a call girl. Guesses as to who Belle was ranged fromRowan Pelling toToby Young according toThe Telegraph. In 2004The Sunday Times featured a front-page headline incorrectly identifyingSarah Champion as the author of the blog based on erroneous textual analysis byDonald Foster.[14]
According toThe Guardian a fellow British blogger guessed her identity in 2003 but kept it secret. He made a page on his blog containing thegooglewhack of Belle de Jour and Brooke Magnanti that allowed him to see if anyone googled the two names. In 2009 he identified IP addresses originating fromAssociated Newspapers that had accessed the page at which point he contacted Magnanti to alert her.[15] Around the same time tabloid reporters had been escorted from the hospital where she worked for breaking into her office.[16]
On 15 November 2009,The Sunday Times revealed in an interview that the author's real name is Brooke Magnanti;[3] she was 34 years of age at the time.[17]The Guardian's Paul Gallagher described it as the revelation of "one of the best kept literary secrets of the decade".[18]The Daily Telegraph's Stephen Adams said it had been "the new millennium's equivalent of the 1980s'search for the golden hare".[17] Such was the nature of the secret that Magnanti's colleagues did not know until one month before she went public, her publishers had been unaware of her true identity until the previous week and her parents found out on that weekend.[17][18][19]
After signing her first book deal and starting writing articles for newspapers, only two other people were aware of her identity, her agent Patrick Walsh and her accountant, who handled the financial transactions via a shell corporation.[20][21] Magnanti commented that she had thought a former boyfriend was on the verge of outing her,[19][22] and later reported him to the police for threats and harassment against her and her partner.[23]
Writing on her blog on the day of the revelation, Magnanti stated:
It feels so much better on this side. Not to have to tell lies, hide things from the people I care about. To be able to defend what my experience of sex work is like to all the sceptics and doubters. Anonymity had a purpose then – it will always have a reason to exist, for writers whose work is too damaging or too controversial to put their names on[22]
A spokesperson for theUniversity of Bristol stated, "This aspect of Dr Magnanti's past is not relevant to her current role at the university", while her publisher said, "It's a courageous decision for Belle de Jour to come forward with her true identity and we support her decision to do so".[22]
He: "So why do you do this?"
Me: "I'm not sure I have an answer to that."
"There must be something that you at least tell yourself."
"Well, perhaps I'm the sort of person apt to do something for no good reason other than I can't think of a reason not to."
Magnanti worked for 14 months as a £300-an-hour prostitute called Taro[24] for a Londonescort agency from 2003, after submitting her PhDthesis.[17][18] She did so due to lack of funds before herviva voce at theUniversity of Sheffield in 2003[17] and is estimated to have earned more than £100,000 in that period.[25]
She had previously been a science blogger using her real name and started blogging about sex work under a pseudonym.[18]Diary of a London Call Girl was voted Blog of the Year byThe Guardian newspaper in 2003. Awards judgeBruce Sterling called it "Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors ... She is in a league by herself as a blogger."[26] Shortly after receiving the award she signed with literary agencyConville and Walsh which negotiated a publishing deal withWeidenfeld & Nicolson.[27]
Reviews of the books compared her writing to the works ofMartin Amis andNick Hornby,[28] and she frequently quotes from the poems ofPhilip Larkin. Themes of the blog and books include isolation andpersonae. "Solitude as much as sex propels these books ... Belle's prickly disbelief in any lasting togetherness picks up an almost existential heft."[29] She writes inPlaying the Game "it's not all about the sex – never has been – it's about the heart of darkness."[30]
Magnanti's publisher,Orion Books, printed her first two books as part of its "Non Fiction/Memoir" line.[31] Her third book was classified as fiction and represents a fictional continuation from the first two. Her books have been published in the UK, US, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, and China.
In 2016 her first thrillerThe Turning Tide was published in the UK. It attracted positive reviews, withThe Guardian listing it among the best recent crime novels[32] andThe Times noting "Magnanti's writing is lively and entertaining. When her victims are laid out on that slab, her unspeakably detailed descriptions are good enough to put the wind upPatricia Cornwell."[33]
From November 2005 until May 2006, Magnanti contributed a regular column inThe Sunday Telegraph.[34] Since her identity had been revealed she has written about UK libel laws and their effect on science forThe Guardian's websiteComment Is Free.[35][36]
On 25 February 2010 Magnanti appeared on the BBC political affairs programmeThis Week to discuss the subject ofsex education.[37] She is also an occasional guest onThe Book Show broadcast onSky Arts[38] and has spoken at a number of venues includingThe Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival in conversation withIndia Knight.[39] She has also spoken on internet and forensic identity as part of theBristol Festival of Ideas[40] and was a guest on theStephen Fry 2011 seriesFry's Planet Word.
In 2012 Magnanti was selected as ambassador for theInvernessWhisky Festival[41] and was ambassador for the festival's gin section in 2015.[42] Magnanti, along withTobias Hill, acted as a judge forFleeting Magazine's 2012 Six-Word Short Story Prize.[43] She was interviewed onHardtalk on the BBC in October.[44]
Since 2012 she has been contributing blogger toThe Daily Telegraph.
Magnanti's PhD thesis, awarded from theUniversity of Sheffield Department ofForensic Pathology, was entitledMacrobioinformatics: the application of informatics methods to records of human remains. It was submitted in September 2003 and the degree was awarded in 2004.[45] After moving to London and while blogging asBelle de Jour she also worked as a computer programmer incheminformatics atInforSense.[46] She blogged about this career at Cosmas.[47]
Magnanti went on to work as a biostatistician in theNewcastle University Paediatric and Lifecourse Epidemiology Research Group (PLERG),[48] researching a possible link between the occurrence of thyroid cancer in under-25s in NE England and radioiodine fallout exposure fromChernobyl in Ukraine.[49]
After her pseudonymous publishing career Magnanti was identified to be working as a research associate in developmental neurotoxicology andcancer epidemiology at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health (BIRCH) at the University of Bristol.[18] Specifically she was part of the EU-funded Henvinet consortium,[50] researching the policies for assessing the risks of developmental neuropathology from exposure toorganophosphates.[51] She collaborated on several EU project policy documents regarding human developmental risks of environmental exposure tochlorpyrifos,[52]phthalates,[53] andDecaBDE andHBCD.[54]
In early 2012, Magnanti published a non-fiction popular science book under her real name entitledThe Sex Myth. It covered topics in sexuality studies and sociological research in the effects of adult entertainment and sex work.
Reviewing forThe ObserverCatherine Hakim wrote "Magnanti offers a pretty sharp analysis of sexual politics: who fabricates the myths and why, the role of both rightwing and leftwing media in building upmoral panics, the vast sums obtained by the pressure groups that profit from them, and, more recently, too, by the pharmaceutical companies that plan to profit from newly invented sexual diseases."[55] It drew a less favourable review fromJulie Bindel, who writes of Magnanti's book, "I disagree with just about everything she has to say".[56]
In 2011 Brooke Magnanti published a statistical re-analysis criticising theLilith Report on Lap Dancing and Striptease in the Borough of Camden,[57] a study which had claimed that sexual crimes increased after the opening oflap dancing venues in the area; the analysis showed this was not the case. The independent London newspaper theCamden New Journal highlighted Magnanti's criticism of the Lilith findings.[58]
In May 2016 Magnanti, alongsideParis Lees, was called to give evidence about sex work conditions in the UK to the Home Affairs Committee investigating prostitution laws in Britain.[25] The resulting recommendations by the committee headed byKeith Vaz, released in July 2016, implemented the pair's suggestions[citation needed] to eliminate criminal records[59] of those arrested for prostitution-related crimes.[60] Sex worker nonprofits called the apparent U-turn decision "a stunning victory for sex workers and our demands for decriminalisation" and "a giant step forward for sex workers' rights in the UK."[61]
A television series loosely based on the first book was in development withChannel 4 in the UK, but eventually aired onITV2 asSecret Diary of a Call Girl. The first series aired from 27 September 2007 to 15 November 2007 starringBillie Piper asHannah Baxter (Belle). Magnanti met Piper in the course of preparing for the role but maintained her anonymity.[62] A half-hour TV programme covering a meeting and conversation between the two was broadcast onITV2 on 25 January 2010. The second series commenced broadcasting in the UK onITV2 on 11 September 2008.
The third series began broadcasting in the UK in January 2010. The fourth and final series started broadcasting in the UK on ITV2 in February 2011.
Magnanti was married and used to live inLochaber in theScottish Highlands.[7][63] She became aBritish citizen in 2013,[2] and moved back to the United States in 2016.[citation needed][64]
In June 2011, an ex-boyfriend issued a libel writ againstThe Sunday Times for a claim of defamation caused by his mention in the paper. The claim, filed by Flight Lieutenant Owen Morris[65] ofRAF Lossiemouth, claimed that following her outing, he was identified as her former boyfriend and therefore mentions of his harassment in the articles had been damaging even though they did not mention him by name.[66]The Sunday Times printed an apology in February 2012,[67] followed byThe Week which agreed to pay damages.[68]
