The Economist February 13th 2021 Books & arts 81Robert MaxwellA made-up life
U
nusuallyfor him,Robert Maxwell
arrivedaloneonNovember1st 1991 to
boardhissuperyacht,theLadyGhislaine, in
Gibraltarforanimpromptucruise.Even
moreunusually,heseemedtobeina good
mood,despitethepressurehewasunder
ashefeverishlyshuffledassetsina vain
bidtostaveoffthecollapseofhismedia
empire.Fourdayslater,a Spanishrescue
helicopterwaswinchinghisbloatedbody
fromtheseaoffGranCanaria,usinga sling
meanttosavecattlefromfloodsbecause
hewastooheavyforanordinaryharness.
Evenindeath,Maxwellwaslargerthanlife.
Abotchedfirstautopsyfedspeculation
abouthowthepublishingtycoonhaddied.
Hadhesimplyfallenintothewater,orwas
it suicide?Couldhehavebeenbumpedoff?
Whenitemergedafewweekslaterthat
£350m(then$603m)wasmissingfromthe
pensionfundofoneofhistwomaincom-
panies, Mirror Group Newspapers, and
tensofmillionsmorefromtheother,Max-
well Communication Corporation, both
thedirestateofhiswildlyover-leveraged
businessesandhiscriminalattemptsto
holdonto themwere revealed.Hadhe
lived,the68-year-oldwouldhavewound
upina prisoncell.
Therehavebeenmanybiographiesof
Maxwell,butthestoryofthismonstrous,
enigmatic,bullying,narcissisticcrookof
giganticappetites,whoathispeakwasoneof the most recognisable businessmen in
the world, may well be largely unknown to
anyone under 40. John Preston tells it with
great verve and the benefit of extensive in-
terviews with, among others, Maxwell’s
one-time rival Rupert Murdoch, who says
he always regarded him as “an absolute
fraud and a charlatan”, and three of Max-
well’s children—though not Ghislaine, his
youngest, who is in jail in New York await-
ing trial on charges linked to her relation-
ship with the sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell was born in 1923 to a Jewish
family in Solotvino, a salt-mining town in
what was then Czechoslovakia, where anti-
Semitism was institutionalised. Ludvik
Hoch, as he was originally called, grew up
in desperate poverty with a brutal father.
Narrowly escaping death after joining the
anti-Nazi resistance, he somehow ended
the second world war as a notably ruthless
young British officer with a talent for lan-
guages, a Military Cross pinned to his chest
by Field-Marshal Montgomery, and a new
name. With his energy, complete absence
of scruple and eye for the main chance—all
his subsequent success was based on his
insight that, after the war, there would be
huge demand across Europe for scientific
publishing, which his company, Perga-
mon, could supply—he realised he could
make serious money.
Mr Preston zips through Maxwell’s
business and political journey (he was
briefly a Labour mpwho drove the House of
Commons mad with his refusal ever to
shut up). His resilience was extraordinary.
He powered on despite losing half a lung to
cancer, the death of two children and, in
1971, being deemed not fit “to exercise
proper stewardship of a publicly quoted
company” in a government report.
The portrait that emerges is more subtly
drawn than previous ones. For all his bom-
bast, chicanery and revolting personal
habits, and his vile treatment of pretty
much everyone who was beholden to him,
not least his family, it is hard not to feel a
stab of pity for Maxwell as the end draws
near. He seems always to have been run-
ning away from his terrible childhood, as-
suming new identities as he went. He
abandoned Judaism until late in life, yet
was haunted by awful guilt for not having
been able to save family members from the
death camps. He was incapable of personal
friendship (perhaps the only exception
was the man who used to dye his hair and
eyebrows). Ceaseless activity masked his
essential loneliness.
Maxwell left a trail of wreckage: this re-
viewer’s father was one of the Mirror Group
pensioners he stole from. But was he any
worse than the cynical lawyers, bankers,
politicians—and some journalists—who
fawned on, flattered and abetted a man
long nicknamed the “Bouncing Czech”? Pe-
ter Jay, a former economics editor of theTimesand British ambassador in Washing-
ton, who spent three miserable years as
Maxwell’s “chief of staff”, has perhaps the
book’s best insight: “There was something
not so much amoral about him, as pre-
moral. It was as if he was literally uncivil-
ised, like some great woolly mammoth
stalking through a primeval forest wholly
unaware of things like good and evil.”
And the mystery of his death? Mr Pres-
ton does not rule out suicide, but his fam-
ily think it more likely that he fell while
peeing over the side of the boat in the small
hours, as he was wont to do. Fall.By John Preston. HarperCollins; 352
pages; $28.99. Viking; £18.99Paper tigerCaste and gender in IndiaDeath traps
A
t theendofMay 2014 a photograph
went viral on Twitter. It showed two
girls hanged on a tree in Uttar Pradesh, in
India. Their relatives were refusing to hand
over the bodies to the state authorities,
who they believed would never deliver jus-
tice for Padma and Lalli, inseparable cou-
sins aged 16 and 14.
Like millions of others, Sonia Faleiro
was horrified two years earlier by a gang
rape on a bus in Delhi, where she grew up.
That crime triggered protests and, ulti-
mately, changes in policy. She set out to in-
vestigate what rapidly became the coun-
try’s most high-profile case since then.
The outrage in Delhi showed that, in In-
dia, “the wheels of justice move only under
pressure from the powerful”. Violent crime
was unremarkable; Uttar Pradesh, India’s
“murder capital” and most populous state,
recorded 12,361 abduction and kidnap inci-
dents in 2014. But the low-caste Shakya
family would not let their loss be dismis-
sed by police whom they saw as inept and
corrupt, and who were dominated by the
Yadav caste then running the state govern-
ment. The family eventually filed official
allegations against three local brothers
and two policemen. Amid the furore, all
five were taken into custody.
International coverage followed the do-
mestic kind. Television crews swarmed in-
to the girls’ village of Katra Sadatganj; poli-
ticians’ helicopters landed among its to-
bacco and mint crops. Narendra Modi was
sworn in as prime minister two days before
the girls were found, but the “good days”
that he promised seemed remote in a place
where most households lacked running
water and electricity. Forbes magazine’sThe Good Girls.By Sonia Faleiro. Grove;
352 pages; $26. Bloomsbury Circus; £16.99