—but the judge has tossed the case out of court, calling the Englishman a liar who “lives in a parallel universe.”
The Iranian woman is Aida Hersham. She was trying to buy a centuries-old mansion that is believed to have inspired Toad Hall, the mansion in “The Wind in the Willows,” a children’s book written in 1908 by Kenneth Graham that was one of the most popular children’s books of the first half of the 20th Century.
The real mansion is called Fawley Court. It was built in the 17th Century and is thought to have been designed by Christopher Wren. It is located near Henley-on-Thames, the home of the annual regatta.
It was put on sale in 2008 and received 12 bids. The highest bid 
of £22.5 million ($35 million), was submitted by Richard Butler-Creagh, the man who sued Aida Hersham.
Hersham, 46, is described as an Iranian heiress who was once married to Gary Hersham, a very wealthy London real estate agent. She had two children with him.
Butler-Creagh claimed she owes him £5 million ($7.8 million) as a “facilitating” fee for helping her buy the property after he agreed to let her “step into his shoes.”
Hersham, who eventually bought the house for £13 million ($20 million), denied there was any such agreement.
Mr. Justice Eady agreed with her.
The judge said it was quite clear that Butler-Creagh, who did not have enough money to pay for the house, had a scheme in mind as soon as he knew it was for sale.
The judge said Butler-Creagh plotted to bring in someone else to provide the funding. He was then to take a commission by placing himself between the buyer and the seller.
“He saw the opportunity to make £5 million for doing effectively nothing,” the judge said. “In order to achieve that, he would have to deceive both the [seller], by giving them the false impression that he had the means and the intention to acquire the property himself, and the hapless [buyer], by pretending to him or her that he was a necessary intermediary.”
The judge said Butler-Creagh “told lie after lie” in his dealings with the seller, a Roman Catholic monastic order, and Hersham and even produced false bank documents to try to prove he had adequate funds.
The judge said of Butler-Creagh’s testimony: “He was an unusual witness. He gave the impression of being quite confident and self-assured. “Yet it emerged very clearly from his two days and more of cross-examination that he lives in a parallel universe where truth and falsehood imperceptibly merge, the one into the other, he being quite insensitive to the distinction
between them.”
