by John Preston
When Martin Cheeseman, who had previously cooked for Harold Wilson in Downing Street, became Maxwell’s private chef in October 1987, Baddeley duly presented him with her six-page list – by now, one suspects, more in hope than expectation. Each morning at seven o’clock Cheeseman would prepare his breakfast. ‘He would have showered and dressed by then. For breakfast I would give him Corn Flakes and orange juice. At lunch, he would usually have a homemade soup, unless he was having lunch with his board. At five o’clock, he might have some smoked salmon or caviar. That said, he could be quite choosy. He hated the smell of cooking and I remember I once cooked him some white asparagus. He called me into the room and said “Mr Martin” – that was what he always called me – “what are these?”
‘I said, “They’re white asparagus, Mr Maxwell.”
‘“No, they’re not,” he said. “They’re pigs’ pricks.”’
Seeing Maxwell at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, the writer and critic Clive James was reminded of ‘a ton and a half of half-cured ham wrapped in a white tuxedo’. At the time, James had just been introduced to Princess Diana, who turned out to share his antipathy. ‘She made a face as if she had just sucked a lemon. “Ooh. There’s that odious man Maxwell over there. Don’t want to meet him again.”’
It was his valet, Simon Grigg, who worked out why Maxwell’s girth kept expanding: at night, he was going to the kitchen and helping himself to food. ‘I’d come in in the morning and see that he’d raided the fridge. There would be all this mess everywhere.’
Meanwhile Maxwell’s manners, always erratic, had also gone haywire. Staff became used to finding plates encrusted with food hidden underneath the furniture. If he was eating a watermelon, he would simply spit the seeds on to the floor for someone else to clear up. Plates would be swept on to the floor if he didn’t like what was on them.
All this of course was a long way from ‘The Three Cs’ and ‘How To Make Friends Among Young and Old’ – ‘Try to be considerate and helpful; avoid selfish and provocative acts.’ But by then something had snapped. However restrained Maxwell attempted to be, the war had been lost. Excess had won the day.
In 1986, Maxwell’s ‘Personal Photographer’, Mike Maloney, accompanied him to Edinburgh. That evening, Maxwell invited Maloney to come and have dinner with him in the penthouse suite of the Sheraton Hotel.
‘He asked me, “What do you like to eat?”’
Maloney told him that he liked most things, but was particularly partial to Chinese cuisine. Excellent, said Maxwell; he was fond of Chinese food himself. Calling up what he had been assured was the best Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh, Maxwell ordered food for fourteen people. When the restaurant protested they couldn’t handle that big an order, he threatened to close them down unless they did as they were told.
Arriving in Maxwell’s suite, Maloney saw that the food had already been delivered and was sitting on the dining table.
‘Right,’ said Maxwell, ‘Let’s eat.’
‘But what about the other guests?’ Maloney asked.
Maxwell looked at him in surprise.
‘What other fucking guests?’ he said, ‘It’s just the two of us.’
17.
A Very Happy Person
In July 1987, Robert Maxwell was a guest on the long-running BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs, where he was interviewed by the show’s presenter, Michael Parkinson. After describing Maxwell’s life story as ‘more exotic than fiction’, Parkinson went on to depict him as ‘a big-league player with the resources and the bravado to walk where angels fear to tread. He is Robert Maxwell.’
MP:‘Bob, have you ever been tempted to write this remarkable life story of yours?’
RM:‘I have been tempted – and induced – and I’m still hoping to get it down. I’m a very happy person. I have a large family. My wife and I have been married – happily married – for forty-two years. We have seven children. We’re very proud of them. Yes, it would be a happy book and I hope that if I do get it written, it would be of both value and amusement to lots of people.’
MP:‘When you look back on your life, you must at times disbelieve that it actually happened?’
RM:‘That is certainly true, but I’m so busy that I do not have the time in recent years to look back on anything. All I’ve got the time for is to deal with the issues of the day, and plan forward a little in order to Get Things Done.’ (This is said with great emphasis.)
MP:‘Has music played a large part in your life?’
RM:‘Yes, music has played a great part in my life. The records I’ve chosen contain memories. They have moved me when I first heard them and I’m happy to take them along as loving companions on to the desert island. Furthermore, I consider people who write music to be the greatest geniuses of all.’
MP:‘Bob, you were born in Czechoslovakia. Can you tell me exactly what sort of background you come from?’
RM:‘I come from a very poor family indeed. My father was an unemployed farm labourer. We didn’t have enough to eat . . .’
MP:‘What sort of effect did that have on you in later life?’
RM:‘All I remember is being hungry most of the time. It has had no effect on me in any way.’ (Again this is said with great emphasis.)
In between his choices of music, Maxwell gives an account of his war years: his being sentenced to death as a spy; his overpowering of the one-armed guard (there’s no mention of the gypsy woman who removed his handcuffs); his arrival in England – ‘with a rifle in my hand’ – and his discovery that most of his family had been wiped out in Auschwitz.
MP:‘How do you feel about it now?’
RM:‘The sorrow of those losses is ever before me.’
MP:‘And your own hatred?’
RM:‘I don’t hate as I did during the War, but I cannot forgive or forget.’
So far Maxwell’s choice of records has included Mozart, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Winston Churchill’s ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’ speech, which he describes as one of the main reasons why he came to England. For his fourth record, Maxwell chooses ‘On the Street Where You Live’, from the musical My Fair Lady.
MP:‘Why have you chosen that?’
RM:‘Because it’s cheerful.’
MP:‘Bob, one of the things that fascinates people about you is this business of being an exceedingly rich man who has made it from nowhere. Is there a trick to making money?’
RM:‘No, there is no trick other than hard work, creativity and recognizing that duty is more important than love.’
MP:‘Would you care to expand on that?’
RM:‘Whatever you do, you must give it total concentration and commitment. If you are out selling and it’s five o’clock and you have a date with your girl, but if you stayed and walked an extra mile you may talk to a customer and fulfil their requirements – then you’d better do that rather than going on your date.’
MP:‘Really? Is that what you’ve done all your life?’
RM:‘That’s what I’ve done all my life. And that’s what I’ve tried to teach my children. It separates the Achiever from the Talker.’
MP:‘Does that involve, of necessity, sacrifices to family?’
RM:‘It does involve, above all, sacrifice to yourself. I have not seen as much of my family as I should have done. But all life is a choice. And if you want to succeed then you have got to commit yourself in order to’ – once again – ‘Get Things Done.’
MP:‘At the end of the day what is the achievement?’
RM:‘The achievement at the end of it is that I feel that my life, which I am continuing to live to the full and will do so until the day I die, I will have left the world a slightly better place by my having lived in it.’
For his seventh record, Maxwell picks Finlandia by Sibelius – ‘Very uplifting’ – and for his eighth and last Má Vlast (My Homeland) by the Czech composer Smetana. His choice of book is the Works of Plato and his luxury a computer program to play chess.
> MP:‘Bob, you’re on your desert island. Are you going to enjoy the experience, do you think?’
RM (unhesitatingly): ‘Yes.’
MP:‘Would you try to escape?’
Maxwell thinks about this. For the first time, a note of wistfulness comes into his voice.
RM:‘No, not for a little while . . . I could use the luxury of having time to think . . .’
He seems about to say something else, then changes his mind, taking Parkinson by surprise. There is an awkward silence.
MP:‘Robert Maxwell, thank you for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.’
Anyone who didn’t know much, or anything, about Maxwell before listening to this would have been left with certain impressions. Above all, that he was a very happy man with a rock-solid marriage and children he adored. A natural optimist who had managed to put the trauma of his childhood firmly behind him. Yet none of this was true. Effectively, his marriage was over and he hardly saw his children unless they happened to work for him. He was also haunted by guilt over what had happened to his family.
As for Maxwell’s claim that music had played a great part in his life, he may have been telling the truth here. However, he hadn’t actually chosen his own records for the programme; instead, he told Betty and his son Ian to do it for him.
Maxwell himself was far too busy.
18.
Battle Rejoined
Sometimes when he was waiting in Maxwell’s office, half braced for yet another tongue-lashing, Peter Jay would listen to him talking on the phone. Every once in a while Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch spoke to one another. Whenever they did, Jay noticed that a particular note came into Maxwell’s voice. ‘I could see that he was obsessed with Murdoch. And when they did speak, Maxwell would sound almost matey; it was as if he wanted Murdoch to be matey with him. The really odd thing was it was like listening to someone who craved acceptance.’
On Saturday, 28 June 1987, Maxwell called Murdoch up in Los Angeles with some important news – news that he was sure would be of great interest. Maxwell proceeded to tell him that he had bought the Today newspaper. Launched just over a year earlier, Today had been jointly owned by the multinational conglomerate Lonrho, which had 90 per cent of its shares, and the paper’s founder, Eddie Shah, who still had 10 per cent.
A mid-market tabloid, Today was the first British newspaper to be printed in colour. As far as most pundits were concerned that was the sum total of the paper’s achievements: it was already losing nearly £30,000,000 a year. But having successfully introduced colour printing on the Mirror – eighteen months before the Sun – Maxwell wanted another colour tabloid to add to his stable. He was particularly keen that Murdoch should be the first to know he’d just brought off another great coup.
‘That was the thing with Maxwell; he couldn’t stop showing off,’ remembers Murdoch. ‘And it was always personal with him, whereas with me, it was never personal.’
Possibly not – but possibly there was more to it than that. As Maxwell insisted on describing every detail of what had happened, Murdoch’s attention began to wane. Then all at once it picked up. From what Maxwell had inadvertently let slip, it seemed that no contracts had actually been signed. While the deal may have been agreed, nothing had been put in writing. In his eagerness to boast, Maxwell had jumped the gun.
As he always did whenever Maxwell told him about his latest triumph, Murdoch waited until he had finished, offered his congratulations, then calmly thanked him for his courtesy. Only this time he did something he’d never done before. The moment Murdoch put the phone down, he caught a plane to Aspen. There he had a hurried series of conference calls with representatives from his company, News International. Learning that the contract with Maxwell was due to be signed at 10.30 on the Monday morning, Murdoch flew overnight to London. By the time he arrived, News International’s lawyers had already put in a bid for Today.
A year earlier, Eddie Shah had telephoned Jeffrey Archer, the former Conservative MP turned bestselling novelist. Archer’s new novel, A Matter of Honour, had just been published to glowing reviews – according to The New York Times, ‘it sizzles along at a pace that would peel the paint off a spaceship’ – and Shah wanted to serialize extracts in Today.
Archer wasn’t tempted: ‘I said to Eddie, “Look, you can’t possibly afford me.”’
Hoping to change his mind, Shah offered him 1 per cent of the paper in lieu of payment. Archer got in touch with his agent and asked what he thought 1 per cent of Today would be worth. Nothing whatsoever, his agent told him confidently. But Archer was amused by the thought of owning a slice of a national newspaper, however tiny, and agreed to the deal. Having done so, he thought no more about it – not until Maxwell called him a few weeks later while he was lying in the bath.
‘I’ve never forgotten it,’ Archer recalls. ‘Maxwell asked if I would sell him my 1 per cent. I said, “That’s very flattering, Bob, but could I think about it?”’ Having dried himself off, Archer called a banker friend to ask what he should do. ‘He told me, “Jeffrey, there must be a good reason why Maxwell wants your one per cent. So it isn’t really just one per cent you own. In real terms it’s far more.”’
Archer asked his banker friend what he should do. ‘He told me to name a price. I said how about £10,000? “No no, Jeffrey,” my friend said, “Go for £500,000 and settle for £250,000.”’ Archer took his advice and a few days later found himself a quarter of a million pounds richer.
But it soon became clear there was a lot more between Maxwell and Murdoch than Jeffrey Archer’s single per cent. Maxwell had offered to pay Lonrho £10,000,000 and promised to take on the paper’s £30,000,000 debt. Murdoch offered £38,000,000 upfront. From that moment, the outcome was never in doubt. As soon as he learned about Murdoch’s bid, an infuriated Maxwell pulled out, referring to Murdoch as ‘that Australian bastard’.
Later, Murdoch would insist that he had no axe to grind with Maxwell. That he’d been looking to buy a middle-market paper for some time, and Today plainly fitted the bill. This, though, wasn’t quite the whole story. Murdoch had always found Maxwell coarse and boorish, as well as absurdly full of himself: ‘You’d switch on the TV in some hotel bedroom and there would be Maxwell in his dark suit and bow-tie telling you about his global communications company. It was all bullshit. I never spoke about him, but he couldn’t stop talking about me. Whatever we did, he wanted to do it too. Also I could see that he was ruining everything he touched. He was a total buffoon really.’
For the fourth time, Murdoch had bested Maxwell.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Maxwell remained convinced that one day he would outsmart Murdoch. The trouble was that by now almost no one else felt the same way. As he watched from the sidelines, the Editor of The Times, Harry Evans, reckoned it was a hopelessly unequal contest. ‘Maxwell thought he’d entered the ring with another boxer, but he hadn’t. In fact, he’d entered the ring with a ju-jitsu artist who also happened to be carrying a stiletto.’
In 1986, a new contestant came into the ring. When he was eight years old, Conrad Black saved up his pocket money and bought a single share in General Motors for $60. Thirty-four years later, he bought the Telegraph Group for £30,000,000. Shortly afterwards, Black was invited to a lunch of Fleet Street proprietors at the Savoy Hotel where Robert Maxwell was a fellow guest.
This was the first time Black had met Maxwell and he wasn’t sure what to make of him. ‘He was a huge physical presence and a rather sinister-looking man because of his heavy eyebrows. I knew people in Fleet Street could be flamboyant, but this guy was very strange indeed. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was extraordinarily worldly and expansive, or a gigantic charlatan. Or some combination of the two.’
By the time Black went to see Rupert Murdoch in New York a few months later, his opinion had hardened. When Murdoch asked him what he thought of Maxwell, Black said, ‘Maxwell is a crook, a thief, a buffoon and probably a KGB man.’ According to Black, Murdoch
was so amused by this that he wrote it down. In Murdoch’s recollection, he – not Black – was the one who came up with the quote.
What’s not in doubt is that by then Murdoch was a big player in America – he’d bought his first newspapers there back in 1973. Twelve years later, in 1985, he became an American citizen so that he could buy a number of television stations – non-US citizens were forbidden from owning more than 20 per cent of a broadcast licence. Maxwell on the other hand was an unknown quantity. His address book may have been bulging with the private numbers of world leaders, but scarcely anybody in America had ever heard of him.
All that was about to change. In September 1988, Maxwell went on a spending spree. First, he offered more than two billion dollars for the American publishers Macmillan. The more prudent of his advisers begged him to think again, or at least exercise some caution. Solemnly, Maxwell promised that under no circumstances would he go above $80 a share. A few days later – without telling them – he upped his bid again.
Gerald Ronson, CEO of the property developers Heron International, had no doubt what was going on. ‘Maxwell had to be in America, and he had to be bigger than Rupert Murdoch. Bob saw an opportunity to beat Murdoch at being Murdoch and took it.’ Ronson too tried to talk some sense into Maxwell. ‘I told him because I thought I owed it to him, “Those Americans are going to bid you up.” But he still had to have an empire in New York. He was like a child at Hamleys; he had to have his toy right away.’
As soon as anyone made a bid for Macmillan, Maxwell would top it. The final purchase price was 2.6 billion dollars – $90.25 a share. This was roughly a billion dollars more than anyone – including the company’s own directors – thought it was worth. And it didn’t stop there. At the same time Maxwell also bought the Official Aviation Guide for $750,000,000 – the guide published timetables for the world’s airline industry. To raise the combined purchase price of 3.3 billion dollars, Maxwell borrowed money from a total of forty-four different banks and financial syndicates. All of them were only too happy to lend him whatever he wanted.