robert maxwell

After his mysterious death, the Potemkin village of Robert Maxwell’s empire came tumbling down. A man who had presented himself as a media mogul and political heavyweight turned out to be a broke fraudster who had ripped off his own employees and amassed vast debts that would never be repaid.

How had Maxwell managed to get away with it for so long? The answer might lie in his involvement in the shadowy realms of espionage and covert international diplomacy.

Robert Maxwell - aka Cap’n Bob, aka the Bouncing Czech, aka Ivan DuMaurier, aka Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch - was born in Czechoslovakia in 1923. Thereafter, his life was a melange of identities and professions: a soldier, awarded one of Britain’s highest honors for valor; an army press officer with ties to Eastern Europe; an asset of British intelligence; a media entrepreneur; a Member of Parliament; and one of the most flamboyant characters of his era. He was accused of being a spy for Israel and the Soviet Union, and of using his covert activities to feather his own nest.

Under the bluster and the braggadocio, was there a real Robert Maxwell with any true loyalties?

After his death, an editor of one of his newspapers, who had worked under him for five years, described Maxwell as a sociopath. Others, including those he ripped off, were less kind.

In the end, did a lifetime of shady activities catch up with him? Or did Maxwell simply fall off the side of his yacht, an anticlimactic end to an extraordinary life?

robert maxwell

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