THIS latest biographical fiction from Jeffrey Archer is loosely based on the careers of Rupert Murdoch and the late, Robert Maxwell. It is a yarn about two newspaper moguls locked in battle for supremacy of the world's largest media empire
They come from opposite social backgrounds, have nothing in common, but are united in the desire to oust each other. Only one of them can win and since we know most of the facts already, Jeffrey fleshes out the bones of history with some titillating fiction.
His story is about the rough and tumble of pop journalism in our time, when not even the Grand Old Dame of Fleet St herself - the Times - was immune to takeover. But as Archer sees it, if this was unavoidable then better that the successful suitor be a good, Tory and a Commonwealth immigrant, rather than one of those eastern European bouncers who change their name every time they cross a frontier.
Keith Townsend fits the bill perfectly. An Australian descended from an old Scottish aristocratic family, he is destined to follow in his father's footsteps and take over the family newspaper. Four years at Oxford, with all the right connections, regular outings to Ascot and thereafter unsuitable term of apprenticeship in Fleet St with his father's old friend, Lord Beaverbrook.
Archer believes an Oxford education will always stand to a man, even if, as in the case of young Keith, he reads nothing more substantial than the racing form and the Rules of Procedure of the Oxford Union, in between seducing the College President's daughter in the cricket pavilion; at a crucial moments in his subsequent career, he will invoke those rules of procedure and save himself from financial disaster.
Of the other protagonist, we are told, "The odds were stacked against him. But the odds had never worried Richard Armstrong in the past." Indeed, his whole life had been spent beating the odds, from the day he jumped off a train in eastern Europe bringing his family to a Nazi death camp, until he stowed away in a ship and ended up ashore in Liverpool.
He told his British captors all he wanted was to shoot as many Germans as possible; so they gave him a name change - the first of many - put him in the army and as the young German soldiers surrendered to the advancing Allies in France, Armstrong accepted their surrender and then shot them in cold blood on the pretext that "you can never trust those bastards".
The same cowardly ruthlessness is later to characterise Armstrong's treatment of Fleet St. editors and journalists who do not see eye to eye with him, or refuse to go along with his "downsizing" rationalising plans. "It's when people think they have me by the balls that I most enjoy screwing them," he boasts.
Long serving old reliables would learn to be most on their guard when he would give them, his big broad smile and place his hairy hand on their shoulder as he walked them from his office to the door of the elevator. Next morning, the clamps would be on their company car and the lock to their office door changed.
Townsend's final aim is the same, even if his methods were a little more subtle. He sent them upstairs with the old revered title of Editor Emeritus E for exit and Meritus for you deserve it. Journalism, as he saw it, was all about "the truth, the whole truth and anything but the truth. Just as long as it sells newspapers".
In the race for circulation, news and balanced comment must give way to sex, drugs and pop stars, and if you can catch a politician up to his knees in scandal, all the better - unless, of course, it happens to be Maggie Thatcher. She was Townsend's heroine ever since she backed him in his war to smash the unions and later boosted his flagging circulation with her timely sortie into the Falklands.
Armstrong, for all his success, in Archer's view remains a flamboyant vulgarian, with pictures of himself in his baseball cap, staring out from the front page of his own tabloids or competing with page three nudes.
By the middle of Archer's bulging saga, our two protagonists have mopped up the British and Australian media scene and are - ready to take on the global wars. Most of the action thereafter takes place in the air and, sad to say, the suspense sags rapidly.
Clearly, Archer has no problems with jet lag. His characters jump off aeroplanes after flying between London and Sydney, take a quick phone call, jump into the shower, sprint out to the airport and back on the next flight to London or New York in time to stop a merger or clinch a deal. They have a round the clock support group of lawyers and super efficient secretaries ready to pander to every whim.
The crunch comes when Townsend goes for the Big One, the Bull's eye in the Sky that will make him or break him. Ominous warnings sounded by the conservative hacks at the Financial Times force his bankers to call him in.
Grilled for six hours by Elizabeth Beresford, the bank's specialist in hopeless cases, Townsend feels as if he has gone twelve rounds with a heavyweight. On the ropes, stripped of all borrowing power, he is ready to concede to her demands, even to handing over his trousers. But she wants more. As he backs slowly towards the elevator door, she says: "One more thing, Mr. Townsend. Hand over all . . . all . . . your credit cards."
Will he get off the hook? Is there one more throw of the dice left in him? Archer, the old master of the social cliche and the soap opera script, keeps us guessing to the end.