For Christmas, a friend of mine sent me the book in the photo above: "The Fall", by John Preston. It is a biography of Robert Maxwell, who has been written about before, but
this book has won the Costa Book prize for biography. I haven't read the other biographies of Maxwell, but I endorse the view of Melanie MacDonagh
in the Evening Standard that this book reads like a novel and, unlike many biographies, is an entertaining read. It is sometimes short on context details, but is a good account of the turbulent life of its subject, and I have learned a good deal about this man who built up an empire, but died in mysterious circumstances and did not live to see his empire come crashing down.
Posterity has not been kind to Maxwell. Rupert Murdoch, known to Private Eye readers as "The Dirty Digger", said of his business rival: "He was a total buffoon really". Conrad Black, erstwhile Daily Telegraph owner, described Maxwell rather differently, if equally as unkindly. He described Maxwell thus: "Maxwell is a crook, a thief, a buffoon and probably a KGB man". Private Eye readers will not be surprised to learn that Rupert Murdoch claims he said this. Whoever said it originally, it is an interesting description; thieves are crooks and the KGB had no use for simple buffoons.
While the book has the pace of a novel, it throws up a picture of a man who was perhaps more complex than the crook and the spy that Murdoch and Black dismiss with such contempt. This does not mean that their charges are without foundation; simply that there could be a deeper, underlying explanation of Maxwell's actions. John Preston has done a first-rate job in pointing to Maxwell's humble origins and early life experiences as underpinning his actions and behaviour in later life.
Maxwell was born into a poor Jewish family in Czechoslovakia on June 10, 1923. In later years, he spoke little about his childhood, but it had a lasting effect upon him, as childhood does for all of us. Maxwell was one of nine children; he himself went on to have nine children. He sometimes spoke of being hungry as a child; when older and richer, he ate gluttonously, weighing 22 stone towars the end of his life. His father, Mehel Hoch, inflicted numerous beatings upon his children. As Preston says:
"Mehel Hoch beat his son on a regular basis - often so hard that he broke his skin"
Preston gives examples of Robert beating his children with a belt when they were younger, and he describes how hard Maxwell could be on them when they were older and worked for him. One example given by Preston is of how Maxwell fired his son, Ian, for failing to collect his father from Orly Airport in Paris in the summer of 1980. Not as brutal as a beating, but an insight into perhaps an inherited attitude to offspring.
One very strange aspect of Maxwell's psyche, which Preston highlights in the book, was Maxwell's readiness to change his name, which he did on a number of occasions. Leaving his Czech home at the age of 16, he assumed several new identities before joining the British Army as Jan Hoch. Having learned English, he transferred to the infantry from the Pioneer Corps. Had he been captured by the Germans, they would have realised from his name that he was Jewish. It was as well for him , then, that he was given a paybook with he name of Leslie Smith. After he had distinguished himself in combat, a Canadian radio broadcast named him as "Leslie Du Maurier". In response to this, his CO gave him a paybook with the name Jones. He became "Robert Maxwell" in late 1944, after becoming a 2nd Lieutenant, because, Preston comments: "...it sounded distinguished and vaguely Scottish". Later in life, one of his surviving sisters, Sylvia asked him, "Why do you always say your name was Jan Ludvik Hoch?". Preston continues:
""...your name is Ludvik. You were named after Uncle Ludvik, not Jan".
Maxwell looked at her in astonishment.
"Was I?", he said."
One thing that even the most hostile of Maxwell's critics would acknowledge was his courage during his military service in Europe in WW2. As a sergeant, he was awarded the Military Cross for leading the rescue of a trapped British platoon. The day before he was awarded the MC, Maxwell learned that his mother and sister had been murdered by the Nazis. This might have led to two incidents, one corroborated, one alleged, where Maxwell personally killed one unarmed German civilian and a group of German soldiers trying to surrender. Again, these actions, if true, are wrong - but understandable.
Postwar, Maxwell set about creating a business empire, based on his purchase of a scientific book publisher which he rechristened Pergamon Press. While this empire grew, with all the trappings of success, together with links behind the Iron Curtain, he engaged in a newspaper war with Rupert Murdoch. As Ian Jack says
in The Guardian: "Newspapers fascinated Maxwell, as they do many egoists, but somehow Murdoch managed to outwit him whenever he tried to get his hands on a newspaper business. It happened with the News of the World, the Sun, Today, the Times and the Sunday Times".
As Harold Evans said, quoted by Preston:
“Maxwell thought he’d entered the ring with another boxer … In fact, he’d entered the ring with a ju-jitsu artist who also happened to be carrying a stiletto".Maxwell was simply outclassed. In 1988, he paid over the odds for Macmillan US ($2.6bn) and the Official Aviation Guide ($750m). Spending recklessly, he bought the failing New York Daily News, which all pundits agreed, was a waste of money. To raise funds, he borrowed from 44 banks and financial syndicates.
As the years went by, Maxwell became increasingly unkind to his family, absenting himself from home and indulging in extra-marital affairs. His French Protestant wife, Betty (another of Maxwell's biographers), endured much heartache. As
Duncan Campbell says:
The end, when it came, is well enough known. The banks called in their loans and Maxwell’s share price needed bolstering. Maxwell sold of his assets, including Pergamon publishing, the foundation of his business from the outset. Eventually, his only, desperate, solution was to rob the Mirror pension fund and, when he knew that was about to be detected, to jump into the sea from the deck of his yacht, November 5th, 1991. In the book, Preston examines Maxwell's death in detail, but comes down in favour of suicide or accident. But there was one person who thought that
Maxwell was murdered...
Maxwell's 9th child, Ghislaine, was of the opinion that her father had been pushed, rather than fallen to his death. As we know only too well, Ghislaine has had her fair share of legal problems - in fact, she is a convicted criminal. Preston says that Ghislaine was her father's favourite, and there is speculation that her attraction to the late Jeffrey Epstein was because he reminded her in many ways of her father.
But that is just speculation. In my parting nod to John Preston's book, I find one passage that I think significant. In Chapter 30, he describes how Ian Maxwell found his father bending down with his nose almost touching the screen of his television. The programme on the TV showed a trainload of Jews arriving at Auschwitz.
"What are you doing?" Ian asked.
Slowly Maxwell straightened up, and then turned around.
"I'm looking to see if I can spot my parents", he told him."
Let me be clear: I totally condemn Maxwell's wrongdoing. His sharp business practices, his bullying of his children and employees, his abuse and neglect of his wife, his robbing of money from his employees' pension fund, his supposed KGB links and his lies are all inexcusable. But I think that the memory of what happened in his youth and the loss of seven siblings and his parents must have eaten away at him, and the trauma of their loss might help to explain his actions. For this reason, then, I see Robert Maxwell as both a perpetrator and a victim.
