Robert Maxwell

Robert Maxwell was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch on 10 June 1923 in the small town of Slatinské Doly on the border with Romania, in the region of Carpathian Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia (now Solotvyno, Ukraine). His parents were poor Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews, and Ludvik was the third of their seven children; another brother and sister died in infancy. At birth, Maxwell's father, Mechel Hoch, gave his son the first names Abraham Lajbi but during registration at the town hall, the attending clerk insisted that the name had to be Czech, so he instead chose the names Ján Ludvík. For most of his early life, Maxwell went by Ludvík, though often still called Lajbi by his family, rendering his name as "Jan Ludwig" during World War II.

Like the rest of the then-newly formed Czechoslovakia, the area of Maxwell's birth and upbringing had been part of Austria-Hungary until early November 1918. During this time until just before his birth (1919), the family name had been not Ludvik but Hoch, as per Austro-Hungarian census and registration. The area would later be annexed by Hungary during World War II before being part of the Soviet Union in 1945.

Maxwell's family originated from Maramureș. Maxwell's authorised biography states that he was also a distant relative of Elie Wiesel, but The Dispatch claimed they could find nothing to substantiate such a claim.

Maxwell described his parents as peasant farm labourers, with his father reportedly also serving as a shochet, also working as woodcutter and cattle wholesaler to tanners and butchers. Maxwell's maternal grandfather, Yaacov Schlomovitch, was a merchant who taught his grandson about trading, also using the family home to smuggle alcohol. At the suggestion of his mother, as the eldest son, Maxwell underwent schooling at a yeshiva, learning to read Yiddish, Hebrew, and Czech, with plans for him to become a rabbi. Afterwards, he attended school for three years between the ages of eight and eleven, learning to speak Czech and Russian in classes, as well as German from Carpathian German schoolmates.

After the war, Maxwell used contacts in the Allied-occupation authorities to go into business, becoming the British and US distributor for Springer Verlag, a publisher of scientific books. In 1951, he bought three-quarters of Butterworth-Springer, a minor publisher; the remaining quarter was held by the experienced scientific editor Paul Rosbaud. They changed the name of the company to Pergamon Press and rapidly built it into a major academic publishing house. After a disagreement with Maxwell, Rosbaud left in 1956.

In the 1964 general election, representing the Labour Party, Maxwell was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham and re-elected in 1966. He gave an interview to The Times in 1968 in which he said the House of Commons provided him with a problem. "I can't get on with men", he commented. "I tried having male assistants at first. But it didn't work. They tend to be too independent. Men like to have individuality. Women can become an extension of the boss." Maxwell lost his seat in 1970 to Conservative challenger William Benyon. He contested Buckingham again in both 1974 general elections, but without success.

At the beginning of 1969, it emerged that Maxwell's attempt to buy the tabloid newspaper News of the World had failed. The Carr family, which owned the newspaper, was incensed at the thought of a Czechoslovak immigrant with socialist views gaining ownership. The board voted against Maxwell's bid without any dissent. The News of the World's editor, Stafford Somerfield, opposed Maxwell's bid in an October 1968 front-page opinion piece in which he referred to Maxwell's Czechoslovak origins and used his birth name. He wrote, "This is a British paper, run by British people... as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding... Let us keep it that way". The paper was later purchased by the Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who later that year acquired The Sun, which had also previously interested Maxwell.

In November 1994, Maxwell's widow Elisabeth published her memoirs, A Mind of My Own: My Life with Robert Maxwell, which sheds light on her life with him, when the publishing magnate was ranked as one of the richest people in the world. Having earned her degree from Oxford University in 1981, Elisabeth devoted much of her later life to continued research on the Holocaust and worked as a proponent of Jewish-Christian dialogue. She died on 7 August 2013.

In July 2020, Maxwell's youngest child, his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested and charged in New Hampshire with six federal crimes, involving minors' trade, travel, and seduction to engage in criminal sexual activity, and conspiracy to entice children to engage in illegal sex acts, linked to a sex trafficking ring with her close friend and partner Jeffrey Epstein (who had already died in jail the previous year). She was convicted on 29 December 2021, and sentenced to 20 years in prison on 28 June 2022.

Spy allegations; Vanunu case

Robert Maxwell has been suspected of having ties to multiple intelligence agencies, including the British MI6, the Soviet KGB, and the Israeli Mossad. The British Foreign Office suspected Maxwell of being a secret agent of a foreign government, possibly a double agent or a triple agent, and "a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia".

Shortly before Maxwell's death, Ari Ben-Menashe, a former employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, approached a number of news organisations in Britain and the US with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas Davies, were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that, in 1986, Maxwell informed the Israeli Embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about Israel's nuclear capability to The Sunday Times, then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for eighteen years.

Journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker repeated some of the allegations during a press conference in London held to publicise The Samson Option, Hersh's book about Israel's nuclear weapons. On 21 October 1991, Labour MP George Galloway and Conservative MP Rupert Allason (also known as espionage author Nigel West) agreed to raise the issue in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege protection, which in turn allowed British newspapers to report events without fear of libel suits. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention" and fired Davies. The Washington Post reported that sources in Britain and Israel disputed Hersh's claims.

A year later, in Galloway's libel settlement against Mirror Group Newspapers, Galloway's counsel announced that the MP accepted that the group's staff had not been involved in Vanunu's abduction. Galloway referred to Maxwell as "one of the worst criminals of the century".