Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364937 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Synopsis
"The Daily Telegraph's" trademark obituary style, created by Hugh Massingberd, is distinguished by the quality of the writing, the humour and the focus on the individuality and character of the subjects. This new collection, the first to be devoted to the business world, is divided into nine sections, each concentrating on a particular group such as 'City Chaps', Entrepreneurs', 'Rogues and Mavericks', or 'Gurus'. In all, some one hundred individuals who died over the past twenty years are covered, most of them British but also including, under the heading of 'Global Players', international figures such as Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, or Giovanni Agnelli of Fiat. Some were household names in their lifetimes, like Lord Sieff of Marks and Spencer or Jimmy Goldsmith of Referendum Party fame. Others were little known to the public but profoundly influential in their own closed worlds of, for example, high finance, and commodity trading or economic think-tanks. Some were flamboyant or eccentric, others self-effacing or secretive. Many did well by stealth; a few went on trial amid widespread publicity.

Unsurprisingly, given the times in which they lived, most were men, but a few, like the 'serial entrepreneur' Jennifer d'Abo, were remarkable and memorable women - their number will no doubt increase in future volumes. What they all had in common was that their skills, their insights, their courage and, not least, their characters played a part in shaping the world in which we live today.

Customer Reviews

You Can't Take It With You
A fascinating collection of obituaries, as always, from the Daily Telegraph's columns. Here are people who controlled the economic (and often political) destinies of whole nations: Agnelli, Kerry Packer, YK Pao etc. Their life's journeys are chronicled with judicious use of anecdote, as when a brash Texan oilman boasted at the roulette table that he was worth US$ 60 million...Kerry Packer just replied "toss you for it"!

As in their other volumes, I do have a problem with the way some of the deceased are corralled into, for example, the "Monster and Mavericks" section, while others, equally peculiar, are under "Playboys" or "Commonweath" etc. And you cannot believe everything you read in any newspaper, not even in the obituary section: the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, not, as the Telegraph staff seem to have believed when penning their obit of Baron Thyssen, 1939! Overall, though, a book which holds the attention right through.