Original headline: 'Pickled dragon' was hoax, admits author
A man who produced a "pickled dragon" which hoaxed most of the world's press has admitted that it was a stunt to publicise his fantasy novel.
Allistair Mitchell, from Eynsham, told newspapers that his friend David Hart, of Sutton Courtenay, had found the specimen, which he believed had been sent to the Natural History Museum in the 1890s by German scientists hoping to dupe their British counterparts.
The museum, he said, had dismissed it as a hoax and it had been spirited away by a museum porter.
In fact, the dragon was not a Victorian hoax but a modern one. The stunt was stunningly successful and his Eynsham home was briefly under siege by the world's press.
Mr Mitchell, a marketing consultant, had paid £6,000 to have the dragon created in latex by Crawley Creatures, the model makers behind TV's Walking with Dinosaurs, and £1,400 for the jar to be made by a specialist glass blowing studio in the Isle of Wight.
His book, Unearthly History, had been rejected by numerous British publishers, but his publicity prowess was noticed by the head buyer of book chain Waterstone's, which agreed to sell the book in all its stores -- if he could publish it himself within ten days.
Not only did he manage it, but the book has sold more than 2,500 copies. He was also contacted by the US publishers HarperCollins, who have offered him a $150,000 three-book deal.
He said: "I was really lucky. Many published writers cannot make a living out of it and now I have been given 18 months' salary to get on with writing the sequels."
But Mr Mitchell has given up waiting for a British publisher and is sticking to his own, Rookstone Publishing. Unearthly History, written under the pen name PR Moredun, is available in Waterstone's.
