Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge
Tom Bower
Harper Press, 436 pp, £20.00
In March of next year, Conrad Black will appear before a Chicago court charged with defrauding his own company, Hollinger, of hundreds of millions of dollars. Tom Bower charts the Byzantine structure of Black’s business empire and the payments between them that amounted to the ‘corporate kleptocracy’ of which Black is accused.
Unsurprisingly, the former Telegraph owner and his wife, Barbara Amiel, come off pretty badly in this account. Black is the pompous, solipsistic, avaricious Canadian businessman who ‘bought and sold (but never effectively managed) several businesses, from mining and tractors to broadcasting companies and newspapers’. His unlikely union with Amiel sprang from their shared right-wing chauvinism and keen ‘social mountaneering’ of Canadian, New York and London high society.
The author marshals the facts expertly, but his pseudo-psychological analysis of the inner workings of the couple’s minds is needless and unconvincing. Typical is the assertion that Amiel’s outward toughness ‘was a masquerade … to gain protection from rejection’.
Bower is also prone to smug piety. Black, it is claimed, never had time for ‘the anonymous, simple honest masses, born underprivileged and without special talents’. Such condescension is somewhat grating given the photo of the author hob-nobbing with Black, Max Hastings and Lord Rothemere at a party in 2002. Nevertheless, this is a solid account of a cheering tale: the fall from grace of a couple with deeply unpleasant views and an obsession with wealth and status.
I was impressed with Tom Bower on the TV show “The Verdict”. He certainly depicted a very accurate picture of a man who had privledge and power and money, but a man who abused the position that he had in life. Barbara Amiel contributed to his downfall.
The thought came to me today “Oh how the mighty have fallen”!
Tom Bower discerns very well the arrogance of Conrad Black and so your comment that “Bower is … prone to smug piety” is not fair.
To make such a statement based on the fact that Tom Bower attended a party with certain influential people in no way discredits the truth of his insight and understanding of the man Conrad Black.
Tom Bower spoke about the deception and the lies of the people involved in this case. I was very impressed with what he shared on the program tonight.
Finally I would hardly call the story of this couple “a cheering tale …”. It would be more appropriate to call the story of this couple ” a tragedy”!