In January 2011 novelist Andrew O'Hagan agreed to ghostwrite Julian Assange's autobiography. He conducted months of interviews with the Wikileaks founder at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, where Assange was holed up while he fought extradition to Sweden on rape charges. But when the book finally came out, long overdue, it was called The Unauthorised Autobiography. And it was unauthorised: Assange disowned it, saying it had been released against his wishes. O'Hagan refused to reveal why the project failed. Until last week, when the London Review of Books published Ghosting, O'Hagan's mammoth blow-by-blow, 26,000 word account of his time with the hacker.

Define irony

It is a brutal take-down. O'Hagan paints himself as a fan willing to be won over by Assange, only Assange is so lazy, so narcissistic, so paranoid and venal (and has such appalling table manners - apparently he eats everything with his hands), that O'Hagan's affection sours into abject disgust. He decides that Assange had no intention of allowing the book to be released.

There are some gobsmacking moments in O'Hagan's demolition. Assange perving over 14-year-old girls outside a cafe. Assange making his girlfriend search for assassins in the bushes outside Beccles police station. O'Hagan also describes the collapse of Assange's relationship with his lawyer, Howard KennedyFsi's Mark Stephens. Media lawyer Stephens is the 's' in HKFsi. He is also, thanks to his appearances as a pundit, a bit of a celebrity in his own right. Even more so now. Stephens first pops up in Ghosting at Assange's extradition hearing. O'Hagan describes him as an "ebullient, red-faced mucker straight out of Dickens, saturated in media savvy", which Stephens really ought to slap straight up on his firm profile.

Gluehand strikes again

O'Hagan reveals that the autobiography was, according to Assange, Stephens' idea: "[Assange] had signed up for a book he didn’t really want to publish because – as he alleged to me separately – Mark Stephens had suggested it might help cover costs."

Unfortunately Assange isn't happy with the costs:



Poor old Stephens. It's nice to know that not even sleb lawyers can escape the occasional ear-bashing from a client. And grow to be hated by them:



Stephens seems to enjoy his high profile in the media: when he was made a freeman of the City, he actually did exercise his right to drive a sheep across London Bridge. But he must have spat out his cornflakes when he read about himself in Ghosting:



It's one thing to negotiate bills with one's clients - lawyers are used to that humbling back-and-forth - it's quite another to read about it in the Sunday papers. Luckily, it's not one-sided. O'Hagan recalls a conversation where he's told, "Mark Stephens thinks [Assange is] having a nervous breakdown". O'Hagan records more lawyerly concern when the autobiography misses its deadline:



Though it may be galling for Stephens and his team to see their opinion of Assange, and his opinion of them, splashed across the mediaverse like, well, a wikileak, at least - for once - the lawyers come across as the victims, and the client as the skeezy mercenary. Very skeezy: "I made lunch every day and he’d eat it, often with his hands, and then lick the plate. In all that time he didn’t once take his dirty plate to the sink. That doesn’t make him like Josef Mengele, but, you know, life is life".