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Maxwell, in the Flesh
Fall: the Mystery of Robert Maxwell, John Preston, Viking/Penguin Books, 2021, 323 pp, hb, £18.99, reviewed by Leslie Jones
In her memoir A Mind of My Own, Betty Maxwell characterised her late husband as “the Greek tragic hero”, the author of his own downfall. Unquestionably gifted and intelligent, Robert Maxwell spoke nine languages and read a book every day, either a Pelican or a Penguin. He could absorb information “at a phenomenal rate”.
On Desert Island Discs, in July 1987, Maxwell described himself as “a very happy person” and claimed that his childhood “has had no effect on me”. He acknowledged, however, (somewhat inconsistently) that as a child he was always cold and hungry, arguably the root of his subsequent gluttony. Ján Hoch, aka Robert Maxwell, was born in Solotvino, Ruthenia (Czechoslovakia), on June 10th 1923. His father, an orthodox Jew, scraped a living selling animal skins. The parents and their nine children lived in a two room wooden shack with an earth floor. There was no running water and only a pit latrine. Maxwell, not surprisingly, rarely spoke of his childhood.
Freud, referring to his own upbringing, emphasised the significance of his mother’s unstinting love and attention. Maxwell’s mother, likewise, doted on her first born son but his father regularly beat him. The boy evidently adored his mother. She perished in Auschwitz along with Maxwell’s father, two sisters and grandfather. Betty believed that he felt responsible for the destruction of his family. Instead of joining the Czech resistance, he should have stayed at home and rescued them. He subsequently tried to replace the family that he had lost with one of his own. He and Betty, whom he married in 1945, eventually had nine children. Like his father before him, he beat them if they did badly at school. His children were all terrified of his temper and intimidated by his high expectations. Continue reading
