Does the Rupert Murdoch story have a Rosebud? Murdoch's most important enduring relationship has been with his mother. The book starts with Dame Elisabeth talking about one single, cataclysmic event in his childhood, describing the man who cannot look back, in terms of a moment that he cannot look back to.

Murdoch's mother creates a myth of a father that Rupert can never live up to. This is why Murdoch's Oxford years are important. For three years his life is not defined by his family or the media business. With his close friend Robin Farquharson, Murdoch helps set up a bogus philosophical society as a ploy to put a bit of zip into their CVs, then they help run the Cherwell magazine. Farquharson was a brilliant bi-polar personality who went on to become one of the pioneers of game theory. Murdoch's close friend was busy setting out the rationale for cutting corners. Farquharson was also outrageously gay . . . this in the days before Murdoch became homophobic.

Just as Murdoch ran into trouble for rigging a student election, his father died. The family was indignant as most of Sir Keith Murdoch's legacy was taken over by the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper chain that he had built up. But how did Sir Keith find the money to buy two small newspaper chains, including an Adelaide operation called News Limited? Sir Keith's critics believed he had arguably 'stolen' the newspapers. Whatever the truth of this, the family's belief that an injustice had been done cemented Rupert's control of the estate. His three sisters might own more of News Limited than he did, but the need to avenge Murdoch family honor meant that Rupert ended up in control.

The Murdoch biographies to date have generally travelled no further than the 1990 debt crisis. The accepted Murdoch history is that Rupert bought the News of the World and the Sun in the late 1960s, the New York Post in the mid-1970s, then in the 1980s he bought Twentieth Century Fox, launched the Fox network, did the $3 billion TV Guide deal, set up HarperCollins, overturned the British printing unions at Wapping, then finally almost went broke in December 1990 because of a little bank in Pittsburgh.

But what if it didn't happen like that? What if Murdoch's great empire building in the 1980s can be seen as just one really bad dream that kept coming back to haunt Murdoch, as he kept scrambling to escape from the hole in which one bad American deal had left him? Like a man carrying a flagpole over his shoulder in a glassware shop, every time Murdoch turned to address a new problem, he set off a new wave of chaos somewhere behind him.

This section originated with a discovery Neil Chenoweth made several years ago during a computer search of New York property records. He came up with a peculiar mortgage that Anna and Rupert Murdoch had signed on a New York apartment in October 1987, two days after the US stock market crash. What did it mean? Why was Murdoch in New York on that day, when by rights he should have been in Australia for the News Corp. annual meeting? And how did that fit in with the strange deal over his father's inheritance 24 hours later? The jigsaw he put together to explain this stretched in a straight line from Michael Milken in February 1985, to Wapping, England, in January 1986, to New York in October 1987, to Pittsburgh in December 1990. It completely rewrites the conventional Murdoch history.

Chapter Two: The Drunken Sailor

Murdoch's history is framed by his decades of rivalry with Ted Turner. The chapter begins with Turner's drunken press conference after winning the America's Cup yachting trophy in 1977, when Murdoch's newly acquired New York Post sends a reporter to cover it, but doesn't cover Turner's antics. The chapter gives the history of both men to that point, and their respective sailing exploits, both of which show their ferocious will to win. My story then goes to the 1983 Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race where a boat backed by Murdoch ran Turner's boat ashore. The race ends with a huge drinking session called the Quiet Little Drink, during which Turner, who has won the race after Murdoch's boat was disqualified, gives a speech in which he tears into Murdoch.

At least, that's the way the Turner camp tells the story. Actually Murdoch's attention was on the war that had just broken out with Steve Ross at Warner Brothers. Murdoch's New York lawyers brought racketeering charges against Warner Brothers directors (later thrown out by the courts). Coincidentally, these charges were laid just as Murdoch's New York lawyers' other major client was putting together a real piece of racketeering in what became the huge Wedtech scandal, thanks to the efforts of the US Attorney for New York, Rudy Giuliani. Thirteen years later these parties will come together again in the Fox News-Time Warner battle for New York, and Giuliani lines up beside the Murdoch lawyers he once investigated.

But that's all in the future. In 1985, Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch both set out to buy a Hollywood studio and a television network. Turner ended up with MGM, Murdoch bought Twentieth Century Fox and the Metromedia television stations. Murdoch had to create multiple levels of reality to overcome the financial, legal and political hurdles in his way. He had to tell the Federal Communications Commission that Fox would be American-owned, and arguing the case to be allowed to keep the New York Post, while at the same time he was telling the Securities and Exchange Commission that Australian-owned News Corporation was the real owner of Fox. He had to take out American citizenship at the same time as he was assuring the Australian prime minister that he was still at heart an Australian. He had to assure his bankers that he was still within his lending limits, although effectively he had borrowed ten times more than he was allowed. Meanwhile he was working just as hard with political juggling in Britain. What Murdoch found was that reality is really all in the way you tell it.