Author(s): Tom Bower

Biography & Memoir

The riveting tale of how the wannabe aristo Conrad Black and his social mountaineering wife Barbara gulled their way into the City, the Tory party, Wall Street and High Society. The rise and fall of the media tycoon Conrad Black is rivalled in its spectacular extravagance only by the machinations of his social mountaineering wife, Barbara Amiel. Together their story of overweening ambition and greed is a modern-day classic of hubris. There is no bolder or better-informed chronicler of the follies of the rich and powerful than Tom Bower. Fearless in the approach which has brought him accolades for his gripping exposes of Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland, Mohammed Fayed and Richard Branson, Bower reveals how the Blacks financed a billionaire's lifestyle and won friends and influence in London and New York. Born into considerable wealth in Canada, Conrad Black bought and sold (but never effectively managed) several businesses, from mining and tractors to broadcasting companies and newspapers. In 1985 he bought the Telegraph group in London, where very little was known of the controversy over his past financial dealings.