Shelf life: TOM BOWER
The unauthorised biographer of figures including Tony Blair, Robert Maxwell and Mohamed Al-Fayed, and former producer of Panorama, shares his top five books with Judith Spelman
Tom Bower writes unauthorised biographies of rich and powerful people. He delves deeply into their lives to find parts that have usually been left out of earlier biographies or deliberately concealed. ‘Whenever I find a detail which shows that a powerful and rich person can be exposed as dishonest or a liar, that is always a great pleasure,’ he says.
He studied law the London School of Economics and worked as a barrister for the National Council of Civil Liberties before joining the BBC as a researcher and becoming a reporter on Panorama. He went on to produce the programme for twelve years.
Tom has written books covering football, the oil industry, World War II and Nazi Germany. His subjects include Klaus Barbie, Robert Maxwell, Simon Cowell, Bernie Ecclestone, Richard Branson, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Conrad Black and Gordon Brown. He pulls no punches and has been sued many times to no avail because he deals with substantiated facts, His latest book, Broken Vows: Tony Blair – The Tragedy of Power was published in March 2016.
DARKNESS AT NOON
Arthur Koestler
The first book Tom has chosen is Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. ‘I read it every year because it is the most superb introduction and explanation of the human condition,’ he says. ‘I just find it a piece of simple writing that is so evocative.’ This is a book about the arrest of a senior communist official in Stalin’s Russia who has been through the whole revolution and is persuaded that he should plead guilty although he is innocent because that is what the party needs. ‘The twist,’ says Tom, ‘is that his original interrogator sympathises with him and that he is not guilty. Then the interrogator himself is executed by a new vanguard of apparatchiks. It’s a fascinating story of the era in which I grew up and which is at the heart of tyranny.’