McEwan Unfairly Accused?

LONDON—A basic indignation underlies colleagues' letters of support for Ian McEwan, who has been accused of plagiarizing from a historical memoir in his novel Atonement. If he can be charged with lifting someone else's work on the basis of scant evidence, the other authors declare, then what about them?
The letters — from heavyweights like Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Updike, Zadie Smith and Martin Amis — were published yesterday in The Daily Telegraph, along with a report on how the campaign had arisen in defence of McEwan. Most of the writers said they were very familiar with what McEwan had done, having done the same thing themselves.