The world that Conrad Black’s wife depicts should read as a warning to those of us fearing another Trump term
When I was 20, the newspaper magnate Conrad Black offered me a job. We were at an event for young journalists, though I was the opposite of his usual social milieu, being shy, scruffy and riddled with self-doubt – the opposite of his wife, columnist Barbara Amiel. He grabbed my hand in his giant paw, barked, “I’ll get you a job at the Telegraph. Good salary, too” and named a figure I just about – at 42 – earn now. He smiled, less like a boss offering employment, more like a king bestowing a blessing. A few years later, he was convicted of fraud.
The 90s was a golden era for alpha power players, and back then they seemed golden, as if they themselves were plated, though that may have been the glint from the riches surrounding them. The Blacks, the Trumps, Robert Maxwell: the men were called “charismatic” by people who confuse charisma with bullshit; the women (Amiel, Ivana, Marla Maples) were styled by the papers as monstrous, and at times they were.
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