“We live at a time when the pursuit of authenticity is more important to us than ever before,” says Alice Sherwood. It doesn’t matter what example you give, she adds, whether it be the trend for artisan food or the fight against the dissemination of disinformation, “it matters to us”. You can punch in an n-gram for authenticity on Google and discover that searches for the term are “going through the roof. And yet we seem to have created a world that is less authentic.”
It’s a paradox that intrigues Sherwood, one that lies at the root of why she wrote her new book ‘Authenticity’ and subtitled it ‘Reclaiming reality in a counterfeit culture’. The word culture is important because, while her forensic dissection of swindles and skullduggery is built on the foundation of science, statistics and expert analysis, there’s also a narrative laced with the inquisitiveness of the storyteller who wants to know why this shift is happening, and whether we can do anything...