麻豆社

John Preston鈥檚 eye-watering biography about the notorious tycoon.

In this episode, Robert Maxwell鈥檚 shape-shifting youth is marked by heroism, love and a murky start in business.

The life story of the larger-than- life newspaper owner Robert Maxwell, takes us from his birth to his mysterious death at sea.

Maxwell remains an enigma. He was a hugely successful businessman who came from humble beginnings as an Orthodox Jew in Czechoslovakia, and whose father sold animal skins for a living. Maxwell became a British war-hero, decorated for his heroism, then a Labour MP, all the while amassing a huge fortune as the owner of publishing and newspaper businesses.

But when he fell from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night in 1991, another story was revealed - of debts and unscrupulous dealings. No-one had ever fallen so far and so quickly.

John Preston's gripping biography sets out to give the definitive account of Robert Maxwell's rise and fall and to explain why underneath this apparent model of society lay an amoral and bloated wreck.

Read by Henry Goodman.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in February 2021.