Cesarani is Professor of Modern Jewish History at Southampton University, author of a history of the Jewish Chronicle, and of a book about Britain's use of SS labor after the war. In June 1993 he applied for access to the Koestler Archive at Edinburgh University library, describing his area of business as "Koestler's Jewish identity and themes in his life and work." Since Michael Scammell was still working on his official biography, Cesarani was asked to sign an undertaking that his research would be "confined solely to the project stated above and will not be used in the compilation of any biographical work about Arthur Koestler." He wrote to Scammell in the same year, telling him that he proposed "to examine Koestler's Jewishness as the hidden thematic of his life and work." 

What happened between that proposal and this book? According to Cesarani's preface, "An investigation into Koestler as Jew broadened into an account of Koestler the man and his achievements as a whole." Put differently, Cesarani got access to a previously uncontaminated archive, knowing it was especially reserved for Scammell, and couldn't believe his luck. "Broadened": rather a slippery word, the more so when the book, rather than the author, is the subject of the verb. Did Cesarani alert the library, Koestler's literary executor, or Scammell to the fact that his work was "broadening"? Obviously not. He hoovered up the archive, made a break for it, and carried on pretending he wasn't writing a biography. He's still doing so. The only problem is that his book looks like a biography, is narrated like one, weighs like one, and even has the bonny-baby-to-elderly-sage photos (many from the Edinburgh archive) of a biography.