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John Preston: "Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell" | SALT Talks #192 — Transcript

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0:02[Music]
0:07hello everyone and welcome back to salt
0:09talks my name is john darcy
0:11i'm the managing director of salt which
0:13is a global thought leadership forum and
0:15networking platform
0:16at the intersection of finance
0:18technology and public policy
0:20salt talks are a digital interview
0:22series with leading investors creators
0:24and thinkers
0:25and our goal on these salt talks is the
0:27same as our goal at our assault
0:28conferences
0:29which is to provide a window into the
0:31mind of subject matter experts
0:33as well as provide a platform for what
0:35we think are big and interesting ideas
0:37that are shaping the future we're very
0:39excited today to welcome
0:41an author and and scholar to salt talks
0:44uh by the name of john preston he's the
0:46author of many books
0:47he's also the former arts editor and
0:49television critic of the sunday
0:51telegraph
0:52as i mentioned he's the author of six
0:53highly acclaimed books including a very
0:55english scandal which is now a bbc and
0:57amazon prime tv series
0:59starring hugh grant and ben wishaw and
1:02the dig which
1:03has recently been filmed starring ralph
1:06fiennis
1:06carrie mulligan and lily james and his
1:09most recent book is called fall
1:11uh it's about the life and death of
1:13robert maxwell
1:14who's been in the news because of his
1:16daughter's travails as well recently
1:18but hosting today's talk is a big fan of
1:20mr preston
1:21and reader of his books anthony
1:23scaramucci who's the founder and
1:24managing partner of sky bridge capital
1:26which is a global alternative investment
1:28firm
1:28anthony is also the chairman of salt and
1:30i'll turn it over to anthony
1:32to begin the end you know i am loving
1:34this right now because i'm
1:35almost 100 confident that you
1:37mispronounced
1:38ralph finds his name yeah is that
1:41correct
1:42mr president well i gotta tell you don't
1:44take this badly you both mispronounced
1:47it
1:47ray finds fine see that i love that well
1:50i
1:51obviously because i'm an italian
1:53american from long island
1:54i'm like an expert i mispronounced every
1:56word that
1:57i utter in the english language but the
1:59fact that you
2:00darcy mispronounced it you know he's
2:02giving me joy beyond
2:04comprehension so i'm entering this salt
2:07talk mr preston in a very good mood
2:09right now
2:10excellent but but sir you wrote a
2:12phenomenal book about
2:14uh mr maxwell the fall it's it's called
2:17fall the mysterious life and death of
2:20robert maxwell um
2:22i want to start out though with how you
2:24became an author your odyssey
2:27i think is an interesting one to uh
2:29beginning the process of writing these
2:31books
2:32uh take us through that arc of your
2:34career sir
2:36well i was a journalist for a long time
2:38and i wrote a few novels
2:40uh i'd get up very early in the morning
2:42and write
2:44for a couple of hours before i went into
2:45the office and the novels did okay i
2:48mean they you know
2:49hardly set the world on fire in terms of
2:51uh sales
2:52and then like a lot of print journalists
2:55you know
2:55in particularly in the uk but also in
2:57the us things started to get bad
3:00and then they got worse and i began to
3:03think
3:03hold on i've got to find something else
3:05to do so
3:07i thought well you know i can't really
3:09do anything else apart from right
3:12so i sat down and i wrote
3:15a very english scandal which was about
3:17the jeremy thorpe affair which is a
3:19big scandal in the 1970s where this man
3:22who was the leader of the liberal party
3:24uh was accused of um diverting liberal
3:29party funds to pay a hit man to bump off
3:31his
3:32gay lover and it really kind of went on
3:34from there and
3:36i
3:40i kind of toyed with the idea of maxwell
3:44for a bit and i couldn't kind of find a
3:46way in
3:48and then it just seemed to me that
3:51you know in the uk 30 years after his
3:55death he's still
3:56seen as the as a kind of embodiment of
3:58corporate villainy
4:00and i really just wanted to look at him
4:01again and see if he was quite as black
4:04as he's been
4:05painted as and if so why
4:08and whether he was perhaps a more kind
4:10of nuanced complex figure
4:12than people have on the whole given him
4:14credit for
4:17so let's go into that because i think
4:20that this is
4:21one of the more fascinating things who
4:24is
4:24for our we have lots of young viewers
4:28uh lots of young listeners uh who is
4:31robert
4:32maxwell john preston who is robert
4:34maxwell well
4:35robert maxwell set out
4:38to become the greatest media baron
4:42in the world and he
4:46very nearly succeeded but in fact
4:49it was it all went horribly wrong
4:53but one of the extraordinary things
4:54about maxwell is that it's
4:56hard to think of anyone in the 20th
4:58century who journeyed
5:00as far from his roots as maxwell did he
5:03was born
5:04in a small town in what was then
5:06czechoslovakia
5:08his uh his family was jewish there was a
5:11large jewish
5:13um population in this um in this town
5:16and the age of 15 or 16 maxwell goes off
5:20essentially to seek his fortune and
5:23whilst he's away it's during the war
5:26um his parents three of his siblings and
5:29his grandfather
5:31all die in auschwitz and that's really
5:35the prison that you have to look at
5:37maxwell's
5:38life through would it have been very
5:42different
5:43had that not have happened to him almost
5:45certainly
5:46would he have been a better person
5:49who knows but essentially there was a
5:52very very dark cloud hanging over him
5:55from a young age so i have a book here
5:59uh it's uh it's called fall
6:03the mysterious life and death of robert
6:04maxwell britain's most notorious
6:07media baron there's another media baron
6:10that is celebrating his 90th birthday
6:13indeed were they were they rivals john
6:15and if so of course they were
6:17describe that rivalry to us they were
6:20maxwell and rupert
6:22for people that are paying close
6:24attention um
6:26robert maxwell and rupert murdoch were
6:28locked
6:29in this titanic struggle for almost 30
6:32years
6:34essentially to become the world's
6:37biggest media baron
6:39and as maxwell's son ian
6:42said to me when i was researching the
6:44book he said you know one of the things
6:45you have to remember is that
6:47there was a time when uh my father and i
6:51my father and rupert murder were the
6:54only two people on the planet
6:56breathing the same air and it was as if
6:58the two of them were kind of slugging it
7:00out
7:01on the top of mount everest to become
7:04you know the greatest
7:08media figure in the world and and
7:10murdock
7:12won every round essentially but in
7:15seeking
7:16to prove that he belonged in the same
7:18arena as murdoch
7:20maxwell set in chain
7:24said in train a chain of events that led
7:27to his own
7:28kind of physical and mental destruction
7:31his downfall and ultimately his death
7:35so but let's go back for a second
7:37because mr murdoch
7:39his father was a print media maven in
7:43australia
7:44he was already starting to reach out
7:46away from australia into other
7:48english-speaking countries uh
7:51and so i'll say something somewhat
7:53english hopefully won't be too offensive
7:55but you guys
7:56sort of have this aristocracy it seems
7:58like murdoch started
8:00from a starting block that was well
8:02ahead of
8:03mr maxwell is that fair to say yeah i
8:06think that's
8:07true but they were both outsiders
8:10and they both were not members of the
8:13british establishment
8:15uh murdoch
8:19wasn't jewish which probably helped him
8:21and although maxwell had changed his
8:23name
8:24to something that sounded not remotely
8:26jewish i think there was quite a lot of
8:28anti-semitism there particularly in the
8:30city of london at the time
8:32but maxwell and murdoch had first
8:36met in 1963 in australia
8:40and when i went to see murdoch for the
8:43book he was
8:45it was very obliging agreed to see me
8:48and
8:49he said that he'd first met maxwell
8:51maxwell comes to australia
8:53and he's got this plan that he wants to
8:55sell encyclopedias
8:57in australia all over in southeast asia
9:00and he's looking for a business partner
9:03and uh and murdock as he admitted was
9:06kind of spellbound by maxwell he's got
9:08the gift of the gab he's very
9:10charismatic
9:12murdock is just starting out and he
9:14agrees to become maxwell's business
9:15partner he's going to pay
9:17a million australian dollars and
9:19together they're going to sell these
9:20encyclopedias
9:22all over southeast asia and the plan is
9:25that murdoch is going to come to london
9:26they'll sign the contract then it'll all
9:28start
9:28but before he has a chance to come to
9:30london murdoch
9:32has lunch with a friend of his who's a
9:34publisher in australia
9:36and he's telling him all about this
9:37great plan he's got with this
9:38extraordinary man maxwell that he's met
9:41and the publisher starts laughing and
9:43murdock is kind of bemused and he's
9:44going well what's so funny
9:46and it turns out that maxwell
9:50had actually got the encyclopedias were
9:52bankrupt stock that the publisher had
9:54given to maxwell for free
9:56and he was trying to flog them on to
9:59murdoch for a million dollars
10:01and as murdock said yeah he was
10:02obviously trying to con me
10:04and he was you know a crook and
10:07as far as murdoch was concerned that you
10:10know
10:10he decided he didn't want any more
10:12anything more to do with maxwell and
10:13that was going to be it
10:14and he never expected to see him again
10:16but in fact
10:17their fates were entwined from that
10:20moment on
10:21and it used to drive murdoch nuts that
10:24they were always being mentioned in the
10:25same
10:26breath and the fact that their initials
10:28were the same as well
10:29added a kind of you know another squeeze
10:32of poison as far as he was concerned
10:35it's you know it's fascinating there's a
10:37picture in the book i'm going to hold it
10:38up here because this is
10:40an interesting picture it is a picture
10:43of
10:43mr murdock and mr maxwell together
10:47and as you point out in the book that is
10:49a rare occurrence for the two of them
10:51to be in the same room together uh
10:54after that sequence of events that
10:56you're describing
10:58um was he a crook
11:01was mr maxwell a crook uh according to
11:04your research i think it's a very
11:08difficult question to answer in a way
11:11if you look at what happened to maxwell
11:16in his the early part of his business
11:19career
11:19he winds up in berlin in 1946 he's
11:23helping to run an allied newspaper
11:26in in berlin designed to kind of uh
11:30reintroduce germans to the joys of
11:32democracy
11:33and this man walks in one day and says
11:35can you help me and he turns out to be
11:37the biggest publisher of scientific
11:39journals in germany
11:40and nobody has published any scientific
11:43research in germany during the war
11:45and this man has a vast backlog of stuff
11:48that he can't get anyone to publish
11:50and maxwell's first instinct is to kick
11:52him out because that's basically
11:53was always max maxwell's first instinct
11:55with anybody
11:56and then he thinks hold on a moment and
12:00for years as a young man
12:02he's dreamt of getting hold of this
12:04commodity
12:05that's going to be an enormous demand
12:07after the war that he can get for next
12:09to no money
12:11and he suddenly realized my god you know
12:13the answers just landed in my lap
12:15and the commodity was knowledge and
12:18maxwell becomes
12:20during the 1950s the world's biggest
12:22publisher of scientific journals
12:25and he
12:28always flew pretty close to the wind in
12:31terms of
12:32his business career but i think he was
12:35you know he was a
12:38he would he well one eye was always sort
12:41of as it were fixed on his profit
12:42margins
12:43the other could occasionally give off an
12:45unexpectedly
12:46idealistic glint and i think he did
12:49strongly believe
12:51in the virtues and importance of
12:53scientific research
12:54it's when he becomes obsessed with
12:58owning a newspaper and with going
13:00toe-to-toe with rupert murdoch
13:03that things really start to go haywire
13:07and the rot sets in is this
13:11uh the classic greek
13:15story of someone that is overreaching is
13:18this hubris
13:19is this a lack of self-awareness is this
13:22just a twist of fate
13:24that leads to accidental tragedy how do
13:26you how do you
13:27uh how would you frame this narrative of
13:30mr maxwell's life
13:31i think it's a classic story of hubris i
13:33mean it's it's a
13:35it's a terrible morality tale in a way
13:39of someone for whom
13:41nothing was ever enough um
13:44and as maxwell becomes older
13:48it's as if he's constantly trying to
13:51grasp this indefinable something that's
13:54going to give him a sense of completion
13:56and fulfillment
13:57and of course it always eludes him and
14:00money doesn't do it and um
14:02and and there always is this kind of
14:05constantly receding horizon and
14:10the more desperate he becomes the more
14:14he overreaches himself
14:16and the more he gets into terrible
14:18financial trouble
14:20and uh and the more the
14:23cracks start to appear
14:27do you do you think that uh
14:31that was a suicide is death
14:35well maxwell
14:39disappeared off the back of his yacht
14:42named after his youngest daughter and
14:44favorite child
14:46the lady gillam in the early hours of
14:49the 5th of november 19 years notice how
14:51he pronounced that i just want to make
14:52sure you get that right john when you
14:54come in with the questions okay
14:55i know that i know that one colleen you
14:58were saying
14:58just lane for like a year but it's fine
15:01go ahead let's go to gelane he's off the
15:03back of the boat did he say
15:04he disappeared off the back of the boat
15:07yeah
15:08is this in that case no i think
15:10basically
15:11that morning he's due to fly back to
15:14london
15:14where he's essentially going to be
15:16facing the equivalent of three firing
15:18squads he knows by this point
15:20that the police are after him the
15:22bankers are after him
15:23and the mirror pensioners know that he's
15:25been looting the pension fund
15:28so there are three possible scenarios
15:32was he pushed did he jump did he fall
15:36now there are a lot of people who will
15:38tell you
15:40uh without any kind of tremor of doubt
15:43that he was bumped off usually by
15:46mossad for so much always the kind of
15:49front runners and the queue here
15:50although it's quite a long queue i mean
15:52and there are certainly a lot of people
15:53who would be
15:54very happy to bump maxwell off but
15:57there's no
15:58evidence at all that he
16:02was murdered and if it doesn't really
16:06make sense i mean why go to the trouble
16:09of sending a team of
16:10amphibious hitmen out to the middle
16:12middle of the atlantic
16:14to tip him into the sea when maxwell was
16:16so addicted to
16:18self-publicity that he practically
16:20walked around with a target pinned to
16:21his forehead anyway
16:23so i think we can safely dismiss murder
16:28if it was an accident in many respects
16:31it was an astonishingly fortuitous
16:33accident
16:35given that he knew what was going to
16:38happen to him
16:40um did he commit suicide well
16:44certainly i mean interestingly about
16:47kind of the people i interviewed for the
16:49book
16:50pretty much split down the middle rupert
16:52murdoch for instance
16:53absolutely convinced no doubt whatsoever
16:56that maxwell committed suicide
16:59my own suspicion is that
17:03the line between an accident and suicide
17:07might be more blurred than we tend to
17:09assume
17:11and i suspect that the answer lies
17:14somewhere along that line
17:19okay so so you're not in
17:22rupert murdoch's camp but you're not
17:24fully convinced but there's a lot of
17:26speculation around him being a
17:28mossad agent a potential double agent or
17:31an
17:32agent of the kgb why did people believe
17:35that to be the case and is there any
17:36truth to those rumors
17:39well there was i mean maxwell was
17:40certainly a spy
17:43and he was spy for british intelligence
17:46during the war
17:48and he had this astonishing capacity to
17:51pick up languages he spoke i think seven
17:53languages so when he is in berlin at the
17:56end of the war berlin is that time
17:57divided into four zones the french zone
18:00the american zone the russian zone
18:03and the british zone i think yep so
18:06maxwell can move from zone to zone
18:09and pass himself off as a native so he's
18:11very very useful to british intelligence
18:13like that
18:14and indeed uh the british intelligence
18:16set him up in business when he comes
18:19to england at the end of the war
18:22um i think he probably stopped being a
18:26spy sometime in the 50s but he carried
18:29on he
18:29loved being
18:33a networker he loved feeling important
18:37and conveying bits and pieces of
18:40information
18:41from one government to another he was
18:44incredibly well connected he had
18:45fantastically good contacts
18:47behind what was then the iron curtain
18:50because he was doing
18:51a lot of business in russia at a time
18:54when virtually no other
18:56uh western business people were doing
18:58any business at all
19:00uh he had very good contacts with the
19:02israeli government
19:04um so he was there was no doubt
19:08that he was a very
19:11kind of useful pipe through which to
19:15pass
19:16information but i don't believe that he
19:19was a double agent for anybody
19:21and i don't believe that he was
19:25a fully paid up agent for anybody either
19:27i mean indeed you know i mean if
19:29given them you know one of the kind of
19:31prime qualifications
19:34spying is normally something that takes
19:36place behind a curtain as it were
19:38maxwell was the complete opposite of
19:40that he had to dominate any room that he
19:43set foot in
19:44so he would have
19:47in many respects been a terrible
19:48liability to any government that
19:51employed him as a spy
19:52so i think he was used by people to pass
19:55information back and forth
19:57but that was pretty much as far as it
19:58went so no no reason for them
20:01then to off him then yeah no no
20:04really not and you know and there's you
20:06know there's
20:08stories that he was trying to blackmail
20:11the israeli government
20:13um and into kind of bailing him out at a
20:16time when everything was
20:18going down the pan but again absolutely
20:22no evidence to suggest that at all and
20:25indeed the fact that the israeli
20:27the israelis pretty much gave him a
20:28state funeral when he died and buried
20:31him on the mount of olives
20:33seems a kind of odd thing to do if
20:36they've just bumped him off
20:38so fascinating stuff but he looms
20:42large even today uh his daughter is now
20:46in jail she was a close friend
20:50of alleged conspirator jeffrey epstein
20:53[Music]
20:54was her upbringing what was her
20:56upbringing like and how did that
20:57association come about
21:01well i think i think it was
21:04the strange thing is that actually
21:07family life
21:09with the maxwell's uh for quite a long
21:13time
21:14was perfectly happy they lived in this
21:16enormous house
21:17um on just outside oxford looking out
21:20over the
21:21dreaming spies of oxford university the
21:24maxwell's had nine children
21:26two of whom died and
21:31gillane is born in pretty much the same
21:34week as maxwell's oldest child's
21:38oldest son who's the heir designate
21:40michael
21:41is very badly injured in a car crash
21:44he's in his teens and he lies in a coma
21:48for the next seven years
21:50and then dies and that
21:53cast this terrible black cloud
21:56over the maxwell's family life
22:00and just as maxwell himself had to be
22:02had been brought up under this terrible
22:04cloud of what had happened to his own
22:05family
22:06i think gillam was brought up under
22:09a similarly black cloud
22:13and like all the maxwell children at one
22:17time or another she worked for his
22:19father she was she was she was his
22:21father's favorite i think she was the
22:22one
22:24who could
22:27charm him more easily than the others
22:32and possibly was less intimidated by him
22:37the maxwells would have these kind of
22:41pretty grim sunday lunches
22:45where they would have to each child
22:47would have to give a little talk about
22:49what they'd accomplished that week and
22:51what they hoped to accomplish in the
22:52week to come
22:54and sometimes they'd be asked about kind
22:55of current affairs
22:57and another of maxwell's daughter
22:59described to me the kind of
23:02fear of watching her the sort of
23:04searchlight beam of her father's gaze
23:07move around the table towards her
23:10and i don't think elaine suffered as
23:13badly from that perhaps as the others
23:16um and then when
23:19her father died she was absolutely
23:23grief-stricken possibly
23:25even more so than any of her siblings
23:29i think she absolutely adored her father
23:32um and she
23:36found herself in new york how i mean
23:40i people have tried to draw analogies
23:43between
23:45jeffrey epstein and her father but they
23:48don't really stack up apart from the
23:50fact they were both
23:52extremely wealthy men at one stage
23:55uh i mean epstein
23:58was a much more
24:02shadowy figure than
24:05maxwell i mean maxwell really was this
24:08tremendous
24:09eager maniac whereas you feel with
24:11epstein
24:13epstein kind of was happier operating
24:16underneath the radar
24:18um and you know
24:21how she came into epstein's orbit well
24:24obviously there's been a lot written
24:25about that
24:27but you know i'm uh
24:30one of the people who think that
24:34it's entirely possible that gillane
24:37you know she seems to have been tried
24:39and found guilty by the media
24:41on both sides of the the atlantic before
24:45she's stood trial and i believe possibly
24:48in a rather old-fashioned way that she
24:50uh deserves a fair trial and who knows
24:53she may not get off
24:56yeah well we'll have to we'll have to
24:57see i i don't know a lot about her um
25:00as i like to tell my friends in new york
25:02i didn't start making any money
25:05until well after jeff epstein's career
25:07was exposed and over so i don't have any
25:10thank god any relationship there but it
25:12does it did seem to be
25:14that anybody of any profile or wealth
25:18was somehow ensnared in his web uh do
25:21you think she was ensnared in his web or
25:23do you think that she was a
25:25quote unquote co-conspirator of his i
25:29the short answer is i don't know and my
25:32book
25:33i very carefully stopped
25:36um before any of that happened because
25:40yeah i feel it is a different story yeah
25:43no no
25:44that's why i'm asking the question
25:45because i i noticed the
25:47stoppage here turn it over to the
25:50millennial you and i are uh
25:52or baby boomers the millennial is dying
25:54to ask questions
25:56tell the truth before the book came out
25:58did you have any idea who robert maxwell
26:00was
26:01i i was probably your i was probably
26:03your age on the goldman sachs trading
26:06desk
26:06where we had done several secondary
26:09offerings for him
26:11and goldman actually had to pay a
26:12settlement to those pensioners john i
26:14don't
26:14john preston yeah absolutely yeah indeed
26:18and so i remember that day vividly
26:20because there was a dark
26:21paula over the trading desk the day that
26:25mr maxwell died
26:26did you know who he was dorsey i did
26:28because
26:29as as any millennial would do i've gone
26:31down the entire you know he's a foreign
26:33intelligence agent rabbit hole
26:35and and jeff epstein and galaine maxwell
26:38were part of some
26:39uh honeypot scheme to ensnare
26:43powerful people around the world uh and
26:46blackmail them
26:47which we're not gonna get deep into
26:49those conspiratorial rabbit holes but
26:51i i knew about him because of the whole
26:52galain maxwell thing and
26:54read up on him but obviously got more
26:58background through this wonderful book
27:02but um yeah thank you anthony for
27:04passing the baton so
27:06one of the things that i found
27:07fascinating about robert maxwell uh
27:09was the similarities he has to to other
27:12schemers that have existed throughout
27:14history whether it be frank abagnale
27:16catch me if you can
27:18um or or others bernie madoff or or the
27:221mdb scandal
27:24where people are able to trick financial
27:27institutions wealthy investors
27:29through just uh sheer force of will
27:32what about his personality and his skill
27:34set allowed him to do that
27:36i think well maxwell was a tremendously
27:39charismatic man he was also very
27:43intimidating
27:45so very few people
27:49in the uk genuinely
27:52stood up to him a lot of people claimed
27:55to have stood up to him
27:57and said that you know i would have no
27:58truck whatsoever with maxwell in his
28:00disgraceful ways but
28:02a lot of them were just rolled over like
28:04you know complete dummies when maxwell
28:06was
28:07actually in their company the
28:10extraordinary thing
28:12about one of the many things about
28:15maxwell's financial affairs
28:18is that throughout the 1980s he's a kind
28:22of you know he's become he's a very
28:24successful
28:25businessman he has he genuinely has
28:28money um in the 1980s
28:32in the beginning in the 1980s
28:35but as things go on and as he
28:38overreaches himself
28:41the very few people ever say well hold
28:44on a minute
28:45you know where is this money and if they
28:48ever did say it
28:49maxwell would go well it's all sorted
28:52away
28:53in liechtenstein and liechtenstein is
28:55this tiny
28:56kind of quasi country which is
28:58essentially a tax haven
29:01so you put money in liechtenstein and
29:04nobody can get at it
29:05so all he ever did was to say well i've
29:07got billions stashed away in
29:09liechtenstein and they all believed him
29:11i mean it was astonishing but i think
29:14that
29:14you know there is a big difference
29:16between someone like maxwell
29:18and someone like bernie madoff in the
29:21you know bernie madoff was solely
29:22interested in lining his own pockets
29:27maxwell weirdly
29:32i mean i think he would have actually
29:34did loot money from the parrot the
29:35pension funds of the
29:36of the mirror of mirror newspapers but i
29:39think he would have paid
29:40it back if he'd been able to he wasn't
29:42particularly
29:43interested in money for the sake of
29:46money
29:47he liked to wield power and influence
29:50but he had virtually no
29:54interest in possessions apart from his
29:56yacht the lady gillam which he was very
29:58fond of
29:59um but he
30:05to say he's a kind of you know he's a
30:08man without a center in a funny sort of
30:10way
30:10what did he want you know and you feel
30:13that maxwell himself didn't really know
30:15and
30:15he's just constantly trying to find out
30:18is it is it like a robert moses
30:21situation the power broker
30:22great robert carro book where a man
30:25maybe starts his life with a certain
30:26ideological bent but then he takes
30:29power and it becomes a pursuit of power
30:31and influence for the sake of it
30:33i think with maxwell
30:37idealism and expediency were always
30:39running along parallel tracks
30:41so i don't think it was necessarily that
30:43one took over from the other
30:44although one certainly did become um you
30:47know
30:48supreme as it were um
30:51i mean i remember when i was when i
30:54started researching the book
30:56and when i started writing it
31:00someone asked me how i was going to do
31:02it and i said it's like a
31:04build your own citizen kane kit and it
31:06really is a bit like that and
31:08and if you chuck in bits of the great
31:10gatsby you pretty much got it
31:12you know you have this extraordinary
31:17vivid technicolor
31:20mythological life um and as i said you
31:23know
31:24as i said to anthony yeah it is very
31:25hard to think of anyone in the 20th
31:27century
31:27who journeyed as far from his roots as
31:29maxwell and you have this strange
31:32feeling the older he becomes it's as if
31:35the past is kind of constantly snapping
31:37at his heels
31:38almost mocking him for what he's
31:40achieved and basically saying you can
31:42never escape who you were
31:47so is this going to be turned into a
31:49netflix series or a movie or both what's
31:52the future of this story because it's
31:53too interesting to not be adapted to the
31:55screen
31:56well it's been bought by uh
31:59uk company working title
32:02and they plan to turn it into
32:07a tv series so there's some discussion
32:10at the moment
32:12whether you could have one actor
32:15playing the young robert maxwell who was
32:20incredibly good-looking i mean rip
32:21looked kind of like clark gable
32:24and maxwell the older he got the bigger
32:27he got
32:28and i mean really to the point where you
32:30would need someone in the
32:32mother of all fat suits to be able to
32:34play him
32:35um so but i'm delighted to say that's
32:37not going to be my problem
32:43if you start i'm cutting your mic john
32:46okay he was trying to suggest that i
32:47could play him without the fat suit
32:51if you start john i'm cutting your mic i
32:53saw where you were going with that okay
32:56no no that is what i'm afraid is
32:59maxwellian paranoia mr president did you
33:01hear what he said he said i had a screen
33:03actors guild card he was already
33:04starving
33:05i had to get in there keep going darcy
33:09go ahead
33:10he had already started to respond before
33:12i even said anything uh
33:14john so your your comment about the
33:15paranoia is correct but
33:17um yeah now that that's fascinating
33:20stuff and we look forward to watching
33:21that
33:22necessarily paranoia if people are after
33:24you just remember that okay
33:28well we look forward to watching it on
33:30screen and hope they remain true to your
33:32wonderful book uh before we let you go
33:34is there anything else
33:35interesting that we didn't cover related
33:37to his life that you think
33:39was interesting as you did your research
33:43i think he's a kind of figure
33:47who foreshadows donald trump in a way
33:52because they both of them have
33:55similar kind of crazed
33:57self-aggrandizements and
33:59maxwell um as soon as he buys the daily
34:02mirror in the
34:03mid 1980s um he re-christens it
34:06uh his headquarters maxwell house so you
34:09can see macmillan there's a
34:10pretty you know short line between
34:14maxwell house and trump tower
34:16and trump uh
34:19maxwell buys the new york daily news at
34:22the beginning of 1991
34:24and trump has indeed tried to buy the
34:26new york daily news on several occasions
34:29during the 1980s um
34:32as a springboard for his political
34:34career
34:36and trump was kind of fascinated by
34:39maxwell
34:40and there's a kind of i remember i
34:42talked to maxwell's valet
34:44who said that maxwell once had a party
34:46on board the lady gillam
34:48and all these kind of the great and good
34:49of new york were there including donald
34:51trump
34:52and because maxwell was very proud of
34:54his um there was a cream shag pile
34:56carpet so all the guests had to take
34:58their shoes off
34:59and put these little kind of blue
35:01plastic booties on that would
35:03protect the carpet and maxwell's valet
35:06told me that you know
35:07maxwell very reluctant that trump very
35:09reluctantly removed his uh
35:11shoes but he looked round the yacht with
35:14this expression of kind of
35:16awe and envy on his face as if
35:19maxwell had something that trump lusted
35:22after but at the time
35:23hadn't quite got his hands on
35:26i guess he eventually got his hands on
35:28it for at least four years
35:30indeed he did all right well john it's
35:33fascinating to have you on it's a great
35:35book
35:35fall about the life and mysterious death
35:39of robert maxwell
35:41anthony you want to hold it up one more
35:42time the american
35:44copies the uk and the american version
35:47but this was a
35:48uh a great read it reads like a thriller
35:51john
35:52uh congratulations on your uh golden
35:55globe winning
35:55uh television series as well and uh
35:59we look forward to your future works
36:01thank you again for joining us on salt
36:03talks
36:04thank you very much indeed and thank you
36:07everybody for tuning in to today's salt
36:09talk with author john preston
36:11just a reminder if you missed any part
36:12of this talk or any of our previous salt
36:14talks
36:15you can access them on our website at
36:17salt.orgbackslashtalks
36:19or on our youtube channel which is
36:20called salttube you can also
36:22interact with us on social media we're
36:24most active on twitter at salt
36:26conference
36:27but we're also on linkedin instagram and
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36:30your friends about these salt talks we
36:32love educating
36:33our community and growing our audience
36:35as well and on behalf of anthony and the
36:37entire salt team this is john darcy
36:39signing off from salt talks for today we
36:40hope to see you back here soon

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