Publisher’s Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Sunday Times best seller.

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2021.

Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award.

A Sunday Times and Telegraph Book of the Year. 

From the best-selling author of A Very English Scandal, the jaw-dropping life story of the notorious business tycoon Robert Maxwell. 

In February 1991, the media mogul and former MP Robert Maxwell made a triumphant entrance into Manhattan harbour aboard his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to complete his purchase of the ailing New York Daily News. Crowds lined the quayside to watch his arrival, taxi drivers stopped their cabs to shake his hand and children asked for his autograph. But just 10 months later, Maxwell disappeared from the same yacht off the Canary Islands, only to be found dead in the water soon afterward. 

Maxwell was the embodiment of Britain’s postwar boom. Born an Orthodox Jew, he had escaped the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, fought in World War II and was decorated for his heroism with the Military Cross. He went on to become a Labour MP and an astonishingly successful businessman, owning a number of newspapers and publishing companies. But on his death, his empire fell apart, as long-hidden debts and unscrupulous dealings came to light. Within a few days, Maxwell was being reviled as the embodiment of greed and corruption. No one had ever fallen so far and so quickly. 

What went so wrong? How did a war hero and model of society become reduced to a bloated, amoral wreck? In this gripping book, John Preston delivers the definitive account of Maxwell’s extraordinary rise and scandalous fall.

©2021 John Preston (P)2021 Penguin Audio