The Fourth Estate is a 1996 novel by Jeffrey Archer. It chronicles the lives of two media barons, Richard Armstrong and Keith Townsend, from their starkly contrasting childhoods to their ultimate battle to build the world's biggest media empire. The book is based on two real life media barons - Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch, who fought to control the newspaper market in Britain. (Murdoch had bought The Sun and News of the World and later Times Newspapers Ltd and Maxwell bought the Daily Mirror and the other newspapers in its group.). The concept of the fourth estate is in essence the press as a watchdog on other powerful institutions or "estates", the original three estates in England and later the United Kingdom being the Lords Spiritual (of the Church of England), the Lords Temporal, and the commons. The fourth estate is charged with keeping an honest watch on activities of the other states and itself. These duties would help democratic societies function properly, openly, and honestly. Debate still flourishes as to whether or not this ever operated (or operates) as it was intended. It also shows a battle between two strong characters from differing backgrounds, who are willing to take endless risks. Sarah Lyall, in The New York Times, thought the work contained "leaden dialogue", but despite the "tantalizing echoes" of Armstrong and Townsend's real life models, the two men "seem about as vivid as bureaucrats in a wire-service story". Hugo Barnacle found evidence of a "dry sense of humour", but asserted that "Archer doesn't do insight or atmosphere, and gives the imagination very few cues." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Estate_(novel) Ian Robert Maxwell, MC (10 June 1923 -- 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and Member of Parliament (MP). He rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire. His death revealed huge discrepancies in his companies' finances, including the Mirror Group pension fund, which Maxwell had fraudulently misappropriated. He escaped from Nazi occupation, joining the Czechoslovak Army in exile in World War II and then fighting in the British Army where he was decorated. After the war he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major publishing house. After six years as an MP during the 1960s, he again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan, Inc, among other publishing companies. He had a flamboyant lifestyle, living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford from which he often flew in his helicopter, and sailing in his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. He was notably litigious and often embroiled in controversy, including about his support for Israel at the time of its War of Independence in 1948. In 1989, he had to sell successful businesses including Pergamon Press to cover some of his enormous debts, and in 1991 he was found dead, floating in the Atlantic Ocean having apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. He was given what amounted to a state funeral in Israel. His death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly struggled to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell

• published: 24 Feb 2014
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