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Henry Goodman reads from John Preston鈥檚 compelling biography. Today, Maxwell鈥檚 success is uncontested, it鈥檚 the 1980s and the age of flash. But opulent parties and champagne business launches mask the cracks appearing in his empire鈥檚 finances.

The life story of the larger-than- life newspaper owner Robert Maxwell, takes us from his birth to his mysterious death at sea. Maxwell remains an enigma, he was a hugely successful businessman who came from humble beginnings as an Orthodox Jew in Czechoslovakia, and whose father sold animal skins for a living, Maxwell became a British war-hero, decorated for his heroism, then a Labour MP, all the while amassing a huge fortune as the owner of publishing and newspaper businesses.

But when he fell from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night in 1991, another story was revealed - of debts and unscrupulous dealings. No-one had ever fallen so far and so quickly.

John Preston's gripping biography sets out to give the definitive account of Robert Maxwell's rise and fall and to explain why underneath this apparent model of society lay an amoral and bloated wreck.

The Reader is Henry Goodman
The Abridger is Richard Hamilton
The Producer is Elizabeth Allard