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Fall/John Preston

This is the story of Robert Maxwell and what a life story it is.

Born as Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923 into an impoverished Czechoslovakian Jewish family who were largely exterminated in the Holocaust, he joined up with the British army liberating Europe, reinvented himself as Captain Robert Maxwell and made his fortune post-war publishing scientific books.

He had no friends but his contact book numbered world leaders to whom he gave the benefit of his advice. A megalomaniac liar and dishonest, he became a world famous tycoon.

After losing out to Rupert Murdoch in his attempt to acquire the News of the World, The Sun and Today, he satisfied his ambition to be a Press baron by buying the New York Daily News and the Daily Mirror. A self-defined capitalist, he became Labour MP for Bletchley, upstaged the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in his (Maxwell’s) maiden speech and his career seemed all but over in the early 1970s after a DTI enquiry into the sale of Pergamon UK to Saul Steinberg’s Leasco pronounced that Maxwell was unfit to run a public company.

Nothing if not durable, his career continued upwards as he acquired a string of companies and a mountain of debt.

I once had the opportunity to meet him in order to witness a document but, thinking I would never be paid and would be hanging around all day for him to appear, I turned it down which I now regret. However, my parents numbered amongst their close friends a publishing entrepreneur whose magazines were acquired by Maxwell. He called Maxwell “the great financial seducer”.

Even his death in November 1991 was shrouded in mystery.

Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide?

Did he fall?

The only certainty was that – with group indebtedness to banks by then over £700m – the game was up.

Eulogies from world leaders followed his death but, when it was revealed he had been stealing from the Mirror‘s pension fund to prop up Maxwell Communications and had been bugging employees, the tone changed.

After discarding his Jewish roots he had obtained a burial plot in Mount Olives cemetery in Jerusalem.

He was given a state funeral in Israel which rather belies the conspiracy theory that a Mossad hit squad had assassinated him.

My theory, based on the testimony of eminent libel lawyer Arthur Davidson who was with with him two days before he took off to his yacht and death, was he was seriously disorientated.

I believe it likely that – as an insomniac with grave financial concerns now coming to a head – he took a walk on deck at  4.00 am and toppled over.

His long-suffering wife Betty, who became an acclaimed scholar of the Holocaust after his death, does not believe he would have committed suicide.

My only critique of this readable and informative biography is that the sources, such as his son Ian, are anti-Maxwell and a a result his achievements are overlooked.

He was a generous philanthropist, especially to children, spoke 9 languages fluently, raised 9 children – two of whom, Michael and Karine, died tragically young – and he, even before Rupert Murdock, was prepared to take on the unions to make newspaper publication viable.

Though he was the ultimate champagne socialist he helped to introduce the Clean Air Act of 1968.

One would like to think that we have seen the last of this type of megalomaniac, but have we?

Pension legislation has been tightened up and bullying in the workplace would now result in a massive claim, but sadly there will always be sycophants, courtiers and professional advisors pushing for another deal propping up the ego of this type of tycoon.

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About Robert Tickler

A man of financial substance, Robert has a wide range of interests and opinions to match. More Posts