Stunning news! Endgame for the Black Diaries controversy!

In a letter published in the April Irish Political Review prominent Casement expert Jeffrey Dudgeon has acknowledged that evidence demonstrating authenticity of the Black Diaries does not exist and he now concedes the possibility of forgery. Dudgeon was for many years the leading forgery denier and a stalwart defender of alleged authenticity. This ‘earthquake’ results from years of pressure on Dudgeon to produce verified evidence proving the notorious diaries are authentic. Jack Lane, long convinced of forgery, says “Jeff could hold out no longer when he realized the police had to send the typescripts to the DPP because they had no diaries – that was the moment of truth. The evidence for forgery is now so strong in the last decade … evidence even in official British documents. The fact is that no-one can name a single independent witness who saw the diaries in 1916.” 

Author Paul Hyde whose controversial book Anatomy of a lie contains powerful evidence of forgery, commented “He knew years ago about the forgery but he withdrew into a state of cognitive dissonance … to filter out the painful truth. In a 2020 email to Senator McDowell he admitted that only typescripts were shown in 1916.”  Hyde adds that even the DPP was shown only police typescripts so that a hypothetical book of evidence contained no evidence. “It was a classic deception by decoy and it worked very well backed up by sleazy propaganda.”

Hyde predicts that Dudgeon’s admission will demolish the popular belief that the diaries are genuine in the same way that the Hitler diaries duped noted experts and historians before being exposed as forgeries. “He has capitulated,” adds Hyde, “without saying so. It’s over. I saw this endgame coming years ago.” 

Jeffrey Dudgeon’s letter in April IPR

The Winston Churchill archives and its Casement papers

The Editorial Team in the March 2026 issue of the Irish Political Review alerted readers for the first time to the existence of  “a copy of the typescripts…in the Churchill Papers.” That is accurate in that Churchill College in Cambridge has a copy of the typescripts of the 1903 and 1910 diaries and of the 1911 Cash Ledger – almost their only Casement-related papers. The provenance is unclear but the College Archives Manager in 2024 did advise me, “The materials were a small accession we received which was entirely separate from the Churchill Papers.”

The absence of the 1911 Diary and the fact of a missing January 1903 Diary page indicates they are a copy of the material handed in the 1920s by Basil Thomson to the journalist Peter Singleton Gates. He published them in 1959 still not knowing of the existence of the 1911 Diary, and without that January page – which does exist in government files at the National Archives in Kew.

In late 1914, Sir Edward Grey had forwarded copies of the Findlay material from Oslo, which spoke of unnatural relations between Casement and Adler Christensen, to Blinker Hall’s boss Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, as well as to Asquith, Kitchener and Birrell. There is no evidence however that Churchill was given one of the six sets of the four typed diaries created by Scotland Yard in May and June 1916. He was out of office for the whole of 1916 which is a reason they would not surface in his Cambridge archive. Neither was he known for strong homophobia, having long had a private secretary, Edward Marsh, who was gay.

It is true as written, “The allegation of homosexual crime played no part in his conviction” since Casement was not charged with such. However it is not accurate to say, “It was introduced only when a campaign against his execution began to be raised.” The allegation was circulated and published in various forms from May 1916, well before the sentence of death was imposed on 29 June. Indeed the first selected sexual extracts from the diaries were typed up early in May, as Jack Lane pointed out in Church and State (No. 139 of 2020).

The DPP 1/46 file he wrote “included, inter alia, the first appearance of the police typescripts, 24 carbon copy pages describing homosexual activity by Casement, submitted to the DPP on the 5th May 1916 with a covering note by Inspector Parker of the Metropolitan Police.” That, as Jack argues, does not preclude the typed versions existing before the diary manuscripts but it certainly indicates official reaction getting under way within days of, but only after, Casement’s arrest on 21 April 1916.

Jeff Dudgeon

11 March 2026

Jack Lane’s response 

Apart from his customary chicanery, what Jeff says about the Churchill documents is essentially correct except that the Churchill typescripts are not copies of the Gates typescripts. They are the Gates typescripts which Gates donated to The Times and which the newspaper donated to Cambridge in 1982. His chicanery is exposed where he insinuates that I ‘pointed out’ that ‘sexual extracts from the diaries were typed up …’ This is false. I merely cited Inspector Parker’s claim.

The issue raised in the last paragraph of Jeff’s letter is crucial as it concerns the question of which were created first – the typescripts or the manuscripts now at Kew.  When he says my case “does not preclude the typed versions existing before the diary manuscripts“, he is in fact admitting that there is no evidence proving the diaries were created first. Typescripts first is therefore a possible reality which Jeff now accepts. Which of the two possibilities is most probable is a matter for informed judgment. Jeff is already halfway to admitting my argument and a resolution can only be found when there is verified evidence for each possibility so that readers can judge from that evidence.  Jeff has not provided the necessary evidence against my argument. Of course, my argument that the typescripts were first might seem counterintuitive and that is why I did some research on the issue. The result was the article to which Jeff refers.

Some background must be acknowledged, briefly. A narrative intended to be forged as manuscript diaries had been in the making since before January 1916 when two British officers visited Putumayo to investigate Casement’s reputation locally; they focused on homosexuality. Casement’s unexpected arrest interrupted the original forgery plan. At a time when the war was going badly wrong for Britain, public morale demanded this detested traitor had to be dealt with as soon as possible.  There was no time for the lengthy forgery of manuscript diaries and instead a rapid typing operation went ahead; something had to be shown promptly.

Jeff has until recently firmly believed that the manuscript diaries did exist when the typescripts were being shown. But where is his evidence?  He accepts that typescripts were sent by the police on 5 May and on 23/24 June to the DPP and he accepts that no manuscript diaries were sent to the DPP. He has not explained why manuscript diaries were not sent. Nor has he produced independent witness testimony for the existence of manuscript diaries at that time. That he has failed to produce verified evidence after so long inevitably leads to the conclusion that the evidence does not exist. And perhaps his letter tacitly hints that he has reached that conclusion.

Jeff has been aware of this problem for at least six years, long enough to find and present the vital evidence. His attention was first drawn to this file in the spring of 2020 as he explained to Michael McDowell: “Jack Lane quotes a letter from a six-volume TNA DPP file (1/46) whose contents I had not been aware of.” (5 October 2020).

For a lifelong, acclaimed proponent of authenticity his present situation is extraordinary because it reveals his former defence of authenticity rested on a vacuum of evidence. If Jeff cannot produce the evidence which explains why police typescripts rather than manuscript diaries were sent to the DPP and why no independent eye witnesses for the diaries have ever been named, he should have the moral courage to honorably admit forgery. His research and scholarship over many years have now brought him to recognizing the very real possibility of forgery. It requires moral courage to admit that.