In the spring of 2014, an anonymous letter surfaced alleging that schools in Birmingham were

at the centre of an Islamist plot to spread and embed extremist ideology in the UK.

Despite the letter being quickly discredited as a hoax, it generated a media frenzy and prompted

a department for education and investigation, led by Peter Clarke, the ex-national head of

counter-terrorism. Clarke's report didn't find any evidence of radicalisation, terrorism,

or violent extremism, but it contained allegations of a pattern of worrying behaviour amongst

Muslim governors and teaching staff, and many lost their careers in education.

The dominant narrative amongst Britain's media and political establishment is that even if

the Trojan Horseletter was a fraud, the subsequent investigations into Birmingham schools uncovered

problems which were very, very real. And as a result, life for British Muslims and how the state

related to them changed dramatically. Despite the basis for that transformation of education,

surveillance, and policing policy being widely known as a hoax, now and has been that bothered

about identifying the source of the fraud. That is until the Trojan Horse Affair, an eight-part

documentary by serial and The New York Times, presented by Brian Reed and Ham's Society,

came out earlier this month. And I've been lucky enough to get the chance to pick their brains

about what they found out. By the way, this interview is going to contain spoilers, so if you're

not into that kind of thing, turn back, listen to the entirety of the Trojan Horse Affair podcast,

and then come back to me later.

So this isn't the first time that journalists have revisited the Trojan Horse Affair,

the BBC did a documentary, the Guardian did a long read, but this is the first time that anyone

seems to have dedicated themselves just to finding out who wrote the anonymous letter and

what kicked everything off. So why do you think known was that interested in finding out who wrote

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