Speaker 1: Pretty pretty big article, pretty long article, And we're going
to begin our exploration of the Maxwell family today and
we're going to start, obviously with the patriarch. We're going
to start with Robert Maxwell today and we're going to
be hearing from the author John Preston, And the article
we're going to be sharing is an excerpt from his
book from Fall, The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell.
So obviously, mister Preston has done the legwork, done the
deep dive, and has explored the history and past of
Robert Maxwell. So that's going to be our starting point
for our conversation about the Manson family. I mean, the
Maxwell family, Maxwell, Manson get it pretty much the same thing,
right with these crazy sons of bitches. So we're going
to begin our exploration of the Maxwell family and the
deep dive that is going to follow it right here
with this article from Town and Country Magazine courtesy of
John Preston. So we've talked about Robert Maxwell at length,
and we've discussed his various dealings, and I have definitely
come to the point where I believe he was big
time involved in getting Elaine and Jeffrey Epstein together. Now
you all know how I feel about that relationship. I
don't believe there was any love there. I don't believe
there was ever any love there, and I think, certainly
from Bob Maxwell's perspective, it was always a business deal.
And you know, like in the old days, when rich
and powerful families would have children and their daughters, they
would be used to cement alliances with other noble houses
or other houses that they might be at war with.
And it's no different for these kind of people these days, right,
Robert Maxwell and the Maxwell clan looked at themselves as
some sort of you know, royal family, And if he
could pawn Gilain off to Jeffrey Epstein and increase his
wealth or his reach or anything like that, then he
wouldn't hesitate to do it. Gilaine Maxwell, to Robert Maxwell
was just another piece on the chessboard. Oh sure, he
liked that piece a little bit more than the others.
But at the end of the day, he certainly would
have no problem sacrificing the queen to save the king.
The mist curious life and death of Robert Maxwell. Today,
Gilain Maxwell's father, Robert is remembered mostly for his death,
but in his prime he represented power, money and shocking deceit,
and British society ate it all up. So again, when
I talk about the United States, that's the face for
the whole entire Western world because this is happening everywhere England,
the United States, France, Italy. It doesn't matter. These people
run a rough shot over All of the elected officials
used backroom chambers, backroom dealings, and they live their lives
like they're above the law, and Robert Maxwell certainly was
no different. Can scandal be hereditary? Gilaine Maxwell's involvement with
Jeffrey Epstein made her a household name, but her ongoing
legal woes didn't art the first time her family had
endured the glare of the spotlight. And yeah, I think
it can be hereditary. Right if you were raised at
good old daddy's knee and you were taught all of
the tricks of the trade and the family business and
how to operate in the shadows, and you learned from
your pops, well, yeah, it could definitely be hereditary and
passed down. How many times have you seen it? In
organized crime, you have a mafioso who has a son
who ends up getting into the life and all of
that was because he spent so much time at the
social club with dad or at the bar with dad,
and this becomes his life. It's the only life they've
ever known. So this is the life they choose, and
it's no different for Maxwell. In my opinion, she knew
that she wanted to be amongst the highest levers of power,
and she knew how to get there. All she needed
was the proper tools. And my friends, there is a
tool for every job, and a job for every tool,
and the Maxwell's optimized that at every turn. When when
Gaillan's father, Robert Maxwell, died in nineteen ninety one, the
official cause of death was a heart attack, but not
everyone was convinced. Rumors swirled that the larger than life
newspaper baron, whose body had been found near the Canary
Islands he was presumed to have fallen off his yacht,
had committed suicide in the face of financial ruin, or
had been assassinated by some shadowy intelligence agency. And was
it really any wonder? And you know what makes me
think about things is this guy's with his body was
found floating around near the Canary Islands. You mean to
tell me that the sharks didn't get them. I know
that there's a ton of sharks around the Canary Islands,
and maybe Robert Maxwell was so and so disgusting that
the sharks didn't even want to eat them. They were like,
you know what, this is obviously gonna give us adjita.
We can't eat this shit. Let this dude float away
and that'll be the end of that, And the sharks
moved on to better tasting prey. How the hell does
this guy float around near his boat and not get
eaten by a shark or some other some sort of
aquatic animal. Throughout his life, Maxwell worked tirelessly to obscure
the truth about himself. Sound familiar, folks, sound familiar. This
is exactly what Gailan Maxwell has done. She has worked
tirelessly to obscure the truth, tirelessly to make it seem
like she is just another so called member of polite
society getting on to get on. And that is a
tactic that these people love to use. They will high
in plain sight while being brazen about their activities, rubbing
everybody's face in it. And for the most part, they
don't have to worry because all of their buddies and
all of their friends that are running around at the
highest levels of politics and power are there to smooth
things out for them the second it gets wrinkled up.
He changed his name, denied his religion, and played shell
games with vast fortunes, all in effort to storm first
the British aristocracy and later the international cabal of billionaires,
businessmen and power brokers. The plan worked, and there's no
doubt Robert Maxwell, Bob Maxwell, had his fingers on the
levers of power in many different places. There's a lot
of talk about his contacts in Russia. There's obviously his
contacts in Israel, America, the United Kingdom, France. You know,
this was a very powerful man with a lot of reach.
This is a guy who had it all, had all
the power in the world, had all the money in
the world, and it was never enough. His greed is
what drove him.
Speaker 2: His greed.
Speaker 1: Is what continued to make him go and in the
end I suspect it was his greed that ended up
killing him. In his lifetime, Maxwell became a global publishing tycoon,
running such newspapers as London's Daily Mirror and the New
York's Daily News, a member of Parliament and a Bete
Noir for the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher. Again,
the levels of power that these people have infiltrated at
folks is the highest levels there is. And that's not
hyperbole either, that's not trying to make the statement more impactful.
Look at the names of the people that guys like
Bob Maxwell was covorting with, Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, the
list goes on. That's just a little taste. A guy
like Robert Maxwell was wielding so much unchecked power for
so long, and to think or to act like the
English authorities had no idea what was going on is
naive at best. How many of them English politicians were
being enriched by Robert Maxwell running their campaigns on his dime,
I'm sure a lot of them. There were also rumors
that he was a spy for Israel or Britain or both,
and I don't even know if like we can call
it rumor at this point. And again I don't know
about spy either, though I think that's a stretch. I
believe he definitely was an asset, but a traditional spy
in this sense of you know, somebody marking some chalk
on a park bench and leaving a message for their handler.
I don't believe that was the case, but I definitely
believe he was an asset of the Israeli intelligence apparatus,
the English Intelligence apparatus, certainly the CIA, and maybe was
even being run by the KGB, or was dogwalking the
KGB for, you know, to to gain more money and
try and gain a little bit more access to more
powerful levers of power. Because we know that's what these
people did. Look, they collected powerful friends like you or
I collected trading cards when we were growing up. In
the new biography Fall, the Mysterious Life and Death of
Robert Maxwell, Britain's most notorious media baron, author John Preston
follows the story of Maxwell's life from a destitute childhood
in Czechoslovakia to the heights of fame and fortune. And now,
remember this is going to be our intro into Robert
Maxwell and then obviously to the rest of the clan,
but we're going to go into his the beginning of
his life and all of that as well. I have
an episode that I'm working on, probably going to come
out next Monday, where it's going to start at the
beginning of Robert Maxwell's life and work through from there
to try and build even more of an idea of
who he was and what his involvement was with people
like Jeffrey Epstein. Preston definitely depicts how the trappings of
money and power can be used to obscure a lifetime
of secrets and lies. In this excerpt, Maxwell's uncanny ability
to deflect attention with abundance is on full display and
serves as a chilling reminder that the apple never falls
far from the tree. And again, I've said it from
the very beginning that I think that Maxwell Gylaane spent
plenty of time at Robert Maxwell's knee, and of all
of the Maxwell children, was the most like dear old Dad.
She had the same chemical build up, she had the
same exact ideas, and she also had the same outlook
on life after spending so much time with her dad
and being so heavily influenced by her dad and the
way Robert Maxwell conducted himself on a day to day basis.
The Dinner Dad Is hosted by Robert and Betty Maxwell
at Headington Hill Hall were considered even by hardened partygoers
to be in a class of their own. The house
itself was an ideal venue for a party. It had
been built in the early nineteenth century by a culture
loving family of brewers, the Morrels. They too had been
keen party givers. In eighteen seventy eight, Oscar Wilde was
among the three hundred guests at one of their fancy
dress balls. For reasons that are not entirely clear, he
chose to come dressed as Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
Speaker 3: So this house has a history, obviously of a place
where the so called elite of England come for parties.
Speaker 1: And it's not a new place when it comes to
these people gathering and having whatever kind of weirdo billionaire
howl at the moon covered in blood type of parties
at these six Pe people have. And it shows you
the kind of power that Robert Maxwell had. He had
to have this kind of house, right, a house that
had some history, a house where you know there was
people before him who were established in society. You know,
it's a good dinner piece conversation. Yeah, you know, Oscar A.
Wild used to hang out at my house. You know
how rich people have to floss about everything. Ever since
the Maxwell's moved into Headington Hill Hall. They continued the
tradition of throwing grand parties. I love it Headington Hill Hall.
All of these names are you know, like a name
from Game of Thrones, right, Summer Hill Hall. And it
cracks me up when I read about these different locations
and you reflect back on different fantasy books that have
come out, and the influence that England and London has
had on the whole fantasy genre is just incomparable. All right, well,
I digress. But as guests soon discovered, Maxwell had his
own way of doing things. The writer and future Conservative
MP Giles Brandrith was a guest at one of their
parties in the nineteen seventies. At first, nothing struck him
as out of the ordinary. It was only when I
went up to Maxwell that I realized he had this
apparatus on There was an old fashioned microphone attached to
the lapel of his jacket with a windshield on it.
And on his belt was this large box the size
of all hardback book with a dial in the middle.
This was somehow connected to the speakers in each of
the rooms, all right, so that explanation. For some reason,
in my mind I had the visions of data from
Goonies and all of his little contraptions that he wore, right,
you know, the little belt contraption he had a contraption
for this for that, Who does Robert Maxwell think he
is data from Goonies, A broken down wannabe Bruce Wayne.
I mean, really, with the apparatuses all over the belt
a windshield, I mean, what are you even wearing? You jackwagon?
Maxwell Brandreth realized was wearing his own personal PA system,
enabling him to address people no matter how far away
they were. Talk about being an arrogant tool. You're walking
around with a PA system on you, looking like Billy
Blanks teaching a tybo class. Get a grip, Daddy serpent.
He turned the dial down when he was talking to you,
then as soon as he saw someone he wanted to
talk to on the other side of the room, he
turned it up again, and this disembodied voice would be
booming out of the speakers. I can only imagine this
idiot trying to get your attention from across the room
with this stupid contraption he's wearing, looking like the world's
biggest moron. For all the splendor of his parties, Maxwell
himself remained an oddly elusive figure. It was as if
there was kind of invisible mode around him. Brandreth recalls
he was definitely a presence, but whenever he came into
a room, instead of the room being more crowded, it
always seems slightly emptier than before. Well, that's what happens
when a bipedal serpent walks in and sucks the air
out of a room, Right, Daddy's serpent comes strolling in
on National Serpent's Day, by the way, that is what
today is, and sucks all of the air out of
the room. I'm sure that Robert Maxwell was an absolute dickhead. Okay,
let's just be let's just be honest, all right. I'm
sure he's one of those rich dickheads that makes you
want to vomit in your own mouth. It is disgusting
the narcissism that we see on display with these people.
As Maxwell's fortune grew, the larger and grander the parties became.
Cabinet ministers would rub shoulders with captains of industry, leading
scientists with newspaper editors. Boy does that sound familiar, Almost
like the blueprint was taken directly from Robert Maxwell, hand
it off to dear old little daughter Mini Serpent, and
then put into action with the help of Jeffrey Epstein.
It is the same exact playbook that was used. Get
close to all of these people of industry, scientists, newspaper editors,
and then go to work shape the narrative. Build yourself
a shield that encompass is all of these dumb idiots
in so called polite society, in the so called realm
of the elite, that gives you the cover to continue
your disgusting human trafficking. And that is exactly the blueprint
used by Jeffrey Epstein and Guilaine Maxwell, just like it
was used by dear old Dad. But the joint party
to celebrate Maxwell's sixty fifth birthday and the fortieth anniversary
of this company Pergamon Press in June nineteen eighty eight,
was confidently predicted to outdo them all in terms of
both opulence and pomp. Now we know that these mfors
like to spend a couple of bucks on their parties, right,
and it all makes sense right when you start looking
at it. Of course, they were willing to spend all
these moneys on parties and on opulence and on all
other sorts of nonsense. Because it wasn't their money. They
were laundering it, they were stealing it. It was a
Ponzi scheme. But meanwhile, even after Maxwell's fall, even after
Maxwell was caught in the act, basically somehow, his children,
his ex wife, all of the Maxwell clan still have
a ton of money. Now, when normal people get caught
up doing something like this, all of your money is
seized by the government. But when you're rich, well, you
find a way around that. Unfortunately, the crack dealer in
south central LA isn't afforded the same luxuries under our
two tiered system. No one, not even as many critics,
could deny that Maxwell was on a roll from Oxford
to Osaka. His empire was booming, as he had boasted
just a few weeks earlier. The banks of US money,
we have so much on deposit?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Is that so so much money on deposit? You mean
money that you were laundering, money that you were stealing,
money that you were taking from other people. And how
much of that money and how much of that scam
was helped along the way by somebody like Jeffrey Epstein.
We know that Epstein was involved in this sort of thing,
moving money around, hiding money, making money untaxable and untraceable.
At the same time, academic institutions were queuing up to
bestow honors upon him. Maxwell had just been given a
Doctorate of Law by Aberdeen University, as well as an
honorary life membership in the University of London's Institute of Philosophy.
Now you see how academia is always involved with the
scummiest amongst us, it would seem. And yet these are
the people who think that it's a good idea for
us to send our children to them, to safeguard them,
to teach them, to show them the right way in life.
Academia should be ashamed of themselves and there should be
a much more forceful voice coming from every corner of academia. Unfortunately,
there's only a handful of strong, courageous people in that
world that have stood up, and doctor Stephen Delay most
certainly is one of them. But we need more people
in that world to stand up, and they need to
understand and admit how deep the problems run on their end.
So many guests had been invited, around three thousand that
had been decided to hold the party over three consecutive nights.
Friday night would be white tie and decorations and Saturday
night black tie, while the Sunday night party would be
a more informal affair for members of staff. In between,
there was a lunch party on Saturday. Oh if your staff,
you can't come to Friday or Saturday. No, no, no,
you know, that's for our real guests. That's like in
the Italian household, if you try and go and get
yourself a little bit of the entemens, your mom will
slap you in the hand with a wooden spoon and
tell you that's for company. So basically, he would have
a little function on Sunday at the tail end of
it for his staff and for people that weren't worthy
of running the halls with the rest of the serpents.
Bob Maxwell and the rest of these people are some
of the most disgusting human beings. And I use that
word loosely that I have ever had the I don't
even know what to say about it. Honestly, I've never
really researched people like this. The whole entire family is scummy,
one scummier than the next. In the days leading up
to the first party, vast marquees were erected around the house.
Two Florida ceiling windows were removed to improve access to
the main marquee. Legions of Floras came down from London
to create elaborate displays in the house, the marquees, and
even the swimming pool. This involved them transporting the flowers
out to the middle of the pool and little dinghies.
Imagine having a pool so damn big you needed a
dinghy to get out to the middle of it. I mean,
my parents have a junior Olympic sized swimming pool in
their backyard and that's the pool I grew up swimming in,
and it's big as hell. I can't even imagine needing
a dinghy to get out to the middle of my pool.
A stage had been built at one end of the
main marquee and a dance floor laid so the guests
could dance on the sound of the Joe Loss Orchestra.
Later on it would be disco. At the end of
the meal, the cast of the West End musical Me
and My Girl would perform highlights from the show. So
they had the whole thing going on here, right. They
had the orchestra, they had a dance floor, they had
it turned into a disco They had people that were
involved in plays doing little skits from those plays. So,
as you can see, it was your typical debased, Romanesque,
deboucherous evening. To ensure that everyone enjoyed unimpeded views of
the entertainment, the dining area had been constructed on two levels.
A mobile dark room had also been set up on
the grounds. Guests who had their pictures taken during the
evening by a team of six photographers would be able
to collect them as they left Wooie. I would love
to find out who those photographers were and what sort
of pictures they still have up the Cuff'd to you
that there are a ton of pictures from this event
that are floating around and these six photographers, those would
be some interesting ass conversations. To mark the fortieth anniversary
of Pergamon, a special book of tributes had been compiled.
Pergamon had grown into the world's largest scientific publisher, and
the editors of Maxwell's scientific journals, more than three hundred
in all, along with various Nobel laureates, extalled his virtues
in extravagant terms. Again, you see the hooks that Bob
Maxwell had into the world of science and academia, and
that was passed down to Gilane the blueprint and to
Jeffrey Epstein. Obviously I don't have direct evidence of that,
but folks, I am convinced that that is how all
of this came to be. If we just take a
look at Bob Maxwell and his blueprint, and we bring
that blue print over and put it on Jeffrey Epstein
and Gilan Maxwell's blueprint, it matches up almost to a
tea today.
Speaker 2: What business needs most is creativity. So let's create new possibilities,
from intelligent automation to security that hunts for threats in
the wild. Let's create something that changes everything. IBM, let's create.
Learn more at IBM dot com.
Speaker 1: Gie the editor of the international journal Journal of Hydrogen Energy,
noted everything Bob Maxwell touches turns to gold. You mean
fools gold, right, while the director of one of his
Japanese companies wrote, each time I have the pleasure of
meeting him, I am reminded of f Scott Fitzgerald's words
that a millionaire is no ordinary man. Yes he is,
and f Scott Fitzgerald was completely wrong. They bleed the same,
They put their pants on the same as us and
guess what, They're no better than you because they have
a couple of bucks. Of most of them had, you know,
the fortunate luck of being born into it, and those
that made their own millions, well, hey, good for you.
Right again. I don't have any problem with people being wealthy.
I think it's a great thing. I think that we
should all want to have a good amount of wealth
because if we all had wealth, then we could do
good things with it, help other people. You know, when
you see something that's wrong, you could jump in and
fix it. But it seems like everybody who has this
kind of wealth is nothing but a scumbag. Last night
during the live stream, I had a listener ask me
if I can name one billionaire that I thought was
a good person, and folks, I honestly cannot. Now. I
know that I'm probably the wrong person to ask, considering
how cynical I am when it comes to these people,
but I really truly believe that there's not one of
one person that comes to mind that I can think of. Now.
I'm sure I'm missing somebody. I'm sure there's probably a
billionaire or two out there that have done good things.
But when you start breaking it down and you look
at all of these hedge funge managers and all of
these people who are in the financial sector. It seems
like all of them have been fined or slapped with
some sort of penalty for stealing and cheating, all of them.
So how can I think and sit here and even
begin to try and lie to you folks or gaslights
you by saying, oh, yeah, well, this millionaire is a
good guy, because honestly, I truly don't think that there
are any at this point. Arthur Barrett, editor of Vacuum,
recalled how his initial doubts about Maxwell had soon disappeared.
I have to confess that quickly realizing his predatory and
entrepreneurial ambitions, I nonetheless took a great liking to him.
And there's no doubt he was a human predator, right,
definitely a predator, the kind of person that preyed on
the less fortunate the week companies that were in peril.
You know, basically the same guy that's taking it in
the shorts right now on Wall Street with the short
of Game Stop, the same kind of scumbag. Among the
congratulatory telegrams was one from the US President Ronald Reagan
as the Happy birthdays ring out Nancy. Nancy and I
are delighted to join in the course of appreciation. Isn't
that nice? Ronnie Reagan? Send your buddy there, Bobby Maxwell,
a nice happy birthday card. The leader of the free
world sending a nice happy birthday card to a scumbag
like Bob Maxwell. You see, folks, Donald Trump wasn't the
cause of the problems. Donald Trump is a symptom of
the problems. And I know it feels good and visceral
to last and blame him, but we have to dig deeper.
We can't just dig under the little bit under the
surface and be like, all right, that's it. Where where
we need to be? This goes back a very long time, folks,
and the politicians that we elect and the people that
have ruled over us for a very long time have
straight up been evil. I'm sorry to say. The Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher offered a somewhat sulipistic contribution of her own.
Robert Maxwell has never made any secret of the fact
that officially he is politically opposed to me. But to
tell the truth, I think he rather liked my approach
to politics and government, a sense of direction and decision.
These are the very qualities that have taken him far.
Oh well, that's nice by the Iron Lady. Huh. You know,
Robert Maxwell, he doesn't like me very much, but I
think that he likes my approach to politics and government.
Probably not the stamp of approval that you're looking for there,
Iron Lady. These are the very qualities that have taken
him far. As far as the Labor leader, Neil Kinnick
was concerned if Bob Maxwell didn't exist, no one could
invent him. Yeah. He is one of those characters, right,
one of those characters that you think you'd only see
in a book. But he was a real life archvillain, folks.
That's what Bob Maxwell was, a real life bad guy.
On the night of the first party, guests passed down
a receiving line where they were greeted by Maxwell, Betty
and all seven of their children. Oh kind of like
when Robert Barrathian comes to Winterfel huh, and the Starks
are all lined up to meet him and greet them.
These people truly thought that that's who they were. They
thought that they were the modern day nobles. They were
royal houses. We were living in a feudal world, and
we were still their serfs, and when they raise the banners,
we have to come running. That's how these people truly lived.
Some of the guests arrived bearing birthday presents. The broadcaster
David Frost turned up with a five hundred pound bottle
of wine, unaware of how much it had cost. Maxwell's
chef later tipped it into a beef stew. Imagine that
five hundred dollars pound I mean five hundred pound dollar
bottle of wine used in this stew. That's the sort
of money we're dealing with. That's the kind of people
we're dealing with. A five hundred dollars pound bottle of
wine pays a lot of people's car payment and insurance,
half of their rent, food for a month. But these
people are like, oh, we'll just pour this in the wine.
I mean pour this in the beef stew. Here they
are so disconnected from reality, folks that when their crash
inevitably come forget Humpty Dumpty, because these pieces can never
be put back together again. For the so called elite.
The toothpaste is out of the tube. As guests sip
their drinks, the band of the Coldstream guards march back
and forth across the lawn before dinner started. Robert and
Betty made their formal entrance into the marquee to an
announcement from the Master of Ceremonies, Ladies and gentlemen, would
you please welcome your host and hostess Robert and Elizabeth Maxwell,
and a fanfare of Harold Trumpeters. Like I said, they
truly believe that they're the modern day aristocracy, the ruling houses,
and that we should all be out working their farms
as their serfs. And when it's time to go fight
in one of their endless, unneeded wars, well make sure
you grab your hoe, make sure you grab your pickaxe,
because you're gonna be on the front line and you're
gonna be cannon fodder while the rest of us eat
our caviat and sip our bubbly Like bad religion says,
We'll just let them meat war. Everyone stood to aplaud
along with a row of metals pinned to his black tailcoat.
Maxwell was wearing a large white enamel cross on a
chain around his neck. Oh yeah, because yeah, I'm sure
Robert Maxwell was captain religious pants. What they do is
they wear these religious symbols from Christian religions or otherwise,
and they do it as mockery. These people aren't religious.
These people are out, you know, howling at the moon
to Moloch and shit, that's what it certainly seems like.
So whenever you see them wearing some sort of religious apparel,
like a cross or anything like that, it's in mockery
in my opinion. This was the Order of the White
Rose of Finland, a decoration normally given to foreign heads
of state and recognition of outstanding civilian or military conduct.
Betty Maxwell wore a dress made of gold embroidered tull
over yellow ti fought Us silk. Boy, must be nice,
Must be nice, huh? A gold embroider and yellow Tafeta silk.
These people are living in a completely different world than
the rest of us folks, and for a long time
they were allowed to exist there up in their so
called rarefied air, without none of us really paying attention.
That shit is over. We are fully engaged now and
you so called elites, you have our full, unadulterated attention.
At one of their earlier parties in nineteen eighty eighty six,
the speech had been given by a former Prime Minister,
Harold Wilson suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. Wilson
had begun this speech brightly enough, but then clearly forgot
who he was supposed to be talking about. This time,
nothing had been left to chance. The main speech was
given by Maxwell's banker, Sir Michael Richardson, managing director of
Rothchild's Bank and an economic advisor to miss thatcher boy,
those Rothchilds are just quality people as well. Huh. I
mean they don't have their hands and all kinds of scumbaggery.
They haven't had their hands in all kinds of scumbaggeries
since oh, I don't know, Waterloo. Do you think it's
just a coincidence, folks, that the same names happen to
pop up in these articles as we go through this.
Do you really think that's just a coincidence? Betty and Bob,
this must be the party of the decade. Richardson declared,
the shouts of here or here and another around of applause.
All of us are delighted to be here because we
believe you have made a major contribution to all of
our lives. But if she sat beaming away by Maxwell's side,
Betty found herself wondering if the party might not be
too puffed up with self importance, if something vital might
not have been lost along the way. Oh, it's all
about the face, right. We got to have the best party.
Everything is about consolidation of power. It comes back to
that no matter what. And you see it in real
time with these articles as we read them, it is
so apparent that these people are operating in a forget
a different world, a whole different universe than the rest
of us. In particular, she had major doubts about the
Harold Trumpeters. I thought it was really over the top,
but I managed to play my part for all its success.
For me, it had lost the intimate quality that our
previous parties had had. It was just too vast. Oh please,
I'm sure that you know your husband felt the same.
The party had to be vast. The more vast it was,
the more glitzy, the more glamorous, the easier it was
for Maxwell to sink his hooks into people. The easier
it was for Maxwell to use the so called rich
and elite to make his own reputation stellar and to
give him access to these higher levels of power, the
same way his daughter used the same blueprint to ape
his behavior all of these years Later. That evening, the
economist Peter j found himself sharing Betty Maxwell's misgivings. It
was as if people came because they wanted to see Maxwell.
It was a spectacle. And although they sucked up to
him and enjoys this hospitality, you could see them raising
their eyebrows at the same time. Oh yeah, I'm sure
that they had such a big problem with it that
they ate all of his food and enjoyed all of
his music and hung out with all of the other scuzzbags.
I love these people who are like, oh, our eyebrows
were raised as you stayed and continue to party and
suck down champagne on his dime, like that makes you
a better person, Just like the jackasses at the Reddit.
Well with the Reddit CEO when Maxwell was at the
party with all of them, and she comes out and says, oh,
we all knew what Maxwell was. Then why are you
still at the party with her? Why didn't you leave
right away? And it comes down to at the end
of the day, these people don't give a damn. After
dinner was over and the cast of Me and My
Girl had finished performing, guests were asked to go back outside.
There they were treated to a fireworks display, the culmination
of which was a huge flaming sign spelling out the
words Happy Birthday, Bob across the Oxford skyline. Must be nice,
big fireworks display, forcing everyone to come out and watch
it in your honor. Nah, no narcissism here, folks. But
not all of the guests stayed to watch. Some of
them them succumb to curiosity and went snooping. Mike molloy by,
now the editor in chief of The Mirror, was particularly
struck by the decor of Headington Hill Hall. All the
furniture looked as if it had been bought from the
sale of a second rate country house in the nineteen twenties,
and the paintings were absolutely terrible. I've never seen a
worse collection. I bet you those paintings were all fake.
He probably had his art collection stashed somewhere to hide it,
make sure that he wasn't getting taxed on it. And
shit and the furniture, well, that doesn't shock me. It
seems to me that a lot of these people have
terrible taste when it comes to the interior decorations of
their houses. I mean, look at how bad Jeffrey Epstein's
houses were decorated. Having inspected the art, Molloy peered into
Maxwell's drawing room. There were all these bookshelves with books
on them, except when I looked more closely, I saw
they weren't real books. They were made out of cardboard.
I couldn't get over it. Here was this man who
had this fortune out of publishing, and yet there weren't
even real books on his shelves. In fact, not all
the books were false, only those concealing Maxwell's stereo system.
And it's just an overall look at Maxwell in general.
His whole life was false. Everything about him was false.
The way he presented himself was false, and even the
books that he had on display were fake. While the
dancing was going on, Maxwell asked another of the guests,
Gerald Ronson, CEO of the property developers Heraan International, if
he would like to come into the house for a
quiet drink. He waved his fat finger at me and said,
let's go into the library because I don't want to
talk to these people. They were Maxwell told him a
bunch of arseholes who would go anywhere if they were
invited by someone important. Well, I can't disagree with Maxwell. There.
He's right about that. These people are a bunch of arseholes,
and they would go anywhere if they were invited by
somebody with power and money, and it doesn't matter how
scummy that person might be. Maxwell had something he wanted
to show him. Bob said, you always thought I was
joking when I told you I had won the Military Cross.
He then opened up a large photo album and proudly
pointed to one of the photographs, taken more than forty
years earlier. It showed Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery pinning the
metal onto the uniform of a much younger, slimmer Maxwell.
Ronson laughed and held up his hands. I said, I
take it all back, Bob. I'm sorry if I didn't
believe you, but you do tell so many stories. Well, folks.
That is the opening salvo into our exploration of the
Maxwell family, starting with Robert Maxwell. Now, this is just
one instance, a bit of an overview, and it gives
to show you a little bit of the opulence and
the way that he lived his life. But as we
begin to dig deeper and go further down this rabbit hole,
you will see that his life was mainly based on stealing,
consolidating power, and being a general all around scuzbag, just
like Daddy's little girl. If you'd like to contact me,
you can do that at Bobby Capucci at protonmeil dot com.
That's Bobby cap you Cci at proton meil dot com.
You can also find me on Twitter at b O
B b Y, Underscore c A p U C c I.
All of the links that go with this episode can
be found in the description box. All Right,