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  * * *

  Two years later, after Armstrong had exhausted everyone, including Stephen Hallet, he settled with Hahn on the courtroom steps.

  Hallet drew up a lengthy document in which Armstrong agreed to return all of Hahn’s property, including publishing material, plates, rights agreements, contracts and over a quarter of a million books from his warehouse in Watford. He also had to pay out £75,000 as a full and final settlement for profits made during the previous five years.

  “Thank God we’re finally rid of the man,” was all Hahn said as he walked away from the High Court in the Strand.

  The day after the settlement had been signed, Colonel Oakshott resigned from the board of Armstrong Communications without explanation. He died of a heart attack three weeks later. Armstrong couldn’t find the time to attend the funeral, so he sent Peter Wakeham, the new deputy chairman, to represent him.

  Armstrong was in Oxford on the day of Oakshott’s funeral, signing a long lease on a large building on the outskirts of the city.

  * * *

  During the next two years Armstrong almost spent more time in the air than he did on the ground, as he traveled around the world visiting author after author contracted to Hahn, and trying to persuade them that they should break their agreements and join Armstrong Communications. He realized he might not be able to convince some of the German scientists to come across to him, but that had been more than compensated for by the exclusive entrée into Russia which Colonel Tulpanov had made possible, and the many contacts Armstrong had made in America during the years when Hahn had been unable to travel abroad.

  Many of the scientists, who rarely ventured outside their laboratories, were flattered by Armstrong’s personal approach and the promise of exposure to a vast new readership around the world. They often had no idea of the true commercial value of their research, and happily signed the proffered contract. Later they would dispatch their life’s works to Headley Hall, Oxford, often assuming that it was in some way connected to the university.

  Once they had signed an agreement, usually committing all their future works to Armstrong in exchange for a derisory advance, they never heard from him again. These tactics made it possible for Armstrong Communications to declare a profit of £90,000 the year after he and Hahn had parted, and a year later the Manchester Guardian named Richard Armstrong Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Charlotte reminded him that he was nearer forty than thirty.

  “True,” he replied, “but never forget that all my rivals had a twenty-year start on me.”

  * * *

  Once they had settled into Headley Hall, their Oxford home, Dick found that he received many invitations to attend university events. He turned most of them down, because he knew all they wanted was his money. But then Allan Walker wrote. Walker was the president of the Oxford University Labor Club, and he wanted to know if Captain Armstrong would sponsor a dinner to be given by the committee in honor of Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the opposition. “Accept it,” said Dick. “On one condition: that I can sit next to him.” After that he sponsored every visit to the university by a front-bench Labor spokesman, and within a couple of years he had met every member of the shadow cabinet and several foreign dignitaries, including the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who invited him to Tel Aviv, and suggested he take an interest in the plight of Jews who had not been quite as fortunate as him.

  After Allan Walker had taken his degree, his first job application was to Armstrong Communications. The chairman immediately took him onto his personal staff so he could advise him on how he should go about extending his political influence. Walker’s first suggestion was for him to take over the ailing university magazine Isis, which was, as usual, in financial trouble. For a small investment Armstrong became a hero of the university left, and shamelessly used the magazine to promote his own cause. His face appeared on the cover at least once a term, but as the magazine’s editors only ever lasted for a year, and doubted if they would find another source of income, none of them objected.

  When Harold Wilson became leader of the Labor Party, Armstrong began to make public statements in his support; cynics suggested it was only because the Tories would have nothing to do with him. He never failed to let visiting front-bench Labor spokesmen know that he was happy to bear any losses on Isis, as long as it could in some way encourage the next generation of Oxford students to support the Labor Party. Some politicians found this approach fairly crude. But Armstrong began to believe that if the Labor Party were to form the next government, he would be able to use his influence and wealth to fulfill his new dream—to be the proprietor of a national newspaper.

  In fact, he began to wonder just who would be able to stop him.

  20.

  The Times

  16 October 1964

  KHRUSHCHEV GIVES UP—“OLD AND III.” BREZHNEV AND KOSYGIN TO RULE RUSSIA

  Keith Townsend unfastened his seatbelt a few minutes after the Comet took off, flicked open his briefcase and removed a bundle of papers. He glanced across at Kate, who was already engrossed in the latest novel by Patrick White.

  He began to check through the file on the West Riding Group. Was this his best chance yet of securing a foothold in Britain? After all, his first purchase in Sydney had been a small group of papers, which in time had made it possible for him to buy the Sydney Chronicle. He was convinced that once he controlled a regional newspaper group in Britain, he would be in a far stronger position to make a takeover bid for a national paper.

  Harry Shuttleworth, he read, was the man who had founded the group at the turn of the century. He had first published an evening paper in Huddersfield as an adjunct to his highly successful textile mill. Townsend recognized the pattern of a local paper being controlled by the biggest employer in the area—that was how he had ended up with a hotel and two coalmines. Each time Shuttleworth opened a factory in a new town, a newspaper would follow a couple of years later. By the time he retired, he had four mills and four newspapers in the West Riding.

  Shuttleworth’s eldest son, Frank, took over the firm when he returned from the First World War, and although his primary interest remained in textiles, he …

  “Would you like a drink, sir?”

  Townsend nodded. “A whiskey and a little water please.”

  … he also added local papers to the three factories he built in Doncaster, Bradford and Leeds. At various times these had attracted friendly approaches from Beaverbrook, Northcliffe and Rothermere. Frank had apparently given all three of them the oft-quoted reply: “There’s nowt here for thee, lad.”

  But it seemed that the third generation of Shuttleworths were not of the same mettle. A combination of cheap imported textiles from India and an only son who had always wanted to be a botanist meant that though Frank died leaving eight mills, seven dailies, five weeklies and a county magazine, the profits of his company began falling within days of his coffin being lowered into the ground. The mills finally went into liquidation in the late 1940s, and since then the newspaper group had barely broken even. It seemed now to be surviving only on the loyalty of its readers, but the latest figures showed that even that couldn’t be sustained much longer.

  Townsend looked up as a table was fitted into his armrest and a small linen cloth placed over it. When the stewardess did the same for Kate she put down Riders in the Chariot but remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her boss’s concentration.

  “I’d like you to read this,” he said, passing her the first few pages of the report. “Then you’ll understand why I’m making this trip to England.”

  Townsend opened a second file, prepared by Henry Wolstenholme, a contemporary of his at Oxford and now a solicitor in Leeds. He could remember very little about Wolstenholme, except that after a few drinks in the buttery he became unusually loquacious. He would not have been Townsend’s first choice to do business with, but as his firm had represented the West Riding Group since its foundation, there wasn’t an alternative. It had