Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Fox paranoia and Deptford

Doing a routine Google News search for 'Deptford' I was surprised to read an article by somebody called Philippe Naughton from The Times dated 7th June 2010 containing the line:

"A 14-week-old baby boy in Deptford, southeast London, was bitten in 2002 when a fox crept into his house while his mother slept. "

Firstly I do not remember such a thing happening and secondly searching Google's News archive, The Newsshopper's archive and The Times own archive fails to shed any light on the story.

My searches do however reveal a review in The Independent of Blake Morrison's 2007 novel South of the River, which contains the following passage:

Harry the reporter, too, has foxes on the brain. Covering the disappearance and possible murder of a child on a Deptford estate, he wonders if a fox, rather than the boy's estranged father, is to blame.

This leaves me with the intriguing question: Is Philippe Naughton a real journalist or merely a product of Mr Morrison's imagination?

1 comment:

  1. Bill, I thought of this post as I was reading 853. Darryl links to a news report of a fox attack in Dartford in 2002. Dartford, Deptford, easily confused...

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