Tom Bower > Quotes

“For evil to succeed, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing.”
― Tom Bower, Maxwell: The Final Verdict

“At the precise moment set out in the timetable, Meghan arrived at the chapel in a Rolls-Royce, the same vehicle that had carried Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee and the Duke of Windsor’s wife, to her husband’s funeral in 1972. The official’s choice was deliberate. As she stepped out of the limousine, Meghan’s bridal train was caught. The escorting officer who opened the door offered no help. The explanation foreshadowed what was to come. After her rudeness during the rehearsal the previous day, explained an officer, no one had any feelings of goodwill towards the bride.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors

“opinion she was being ‘maliciously’ depicted by her discarded friend ‘as a conniving social climber who had her sights on snagging a prince ever since she was in high school.’361 Priddy’s assessment”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors

“young Harry was known to his mother’s staff as a contrarian who did the opposite of what he was told. As he grew up he became increasingly undisciplined. His father and his wider family watched helplessly as the boy refused to behave and rejected education. After he unsuccessfully tried to pass his entrance exam to Eton, his relations recognised that Harry’s ignorance was spilling over into arrogance. That reality was concealed during Diana’s funeral.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“As she would later admit, she ‘occasionally set up a paparazzi photo or let info slip out to the press’.135”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“The Sussexes were cheered for urging manufacturers to donate free vaccines to poor countries. ‘The ultra-wealthy pharmaceutical companies are not sharing the recipes to make them,’ Harry told the crowd. ‘Recipes’ is the word he used.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors

“Robert Maxwell had always yearned to manage a publicly quoted company, not just for the prestige but, more pertinently, to enable him to play with other people’s money. The Maxwell Communication Corporation was that tool, marred though it was for him by a colossal defect: the legal requirement for public accountability.”
― Tom Bower, Maxwell: The Final Verdict

“oppressed’ – the victims of Anglo-American imperialism. Labelling Israel uniquely as a ‘racist state’ was the climax of twenty-five years of lobbying started by Labour MP Peter Hain, the former student anti-apartheid campaigner, who accused Israel of oppressing the Palestinians even more than South Africa had oppressed blacks under apartheid. Over that period, and especially during the year before they met in Durban, the anti-Zionists’ language had become increasingly anti-Semitic. At the beginning of 2001, the groups that were to meet in Durban had celebrated the final collapse of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. To their satisfaction, the Palestinians launched a second intifada, seeking to kill as many Israelis as possible. Eight months later, at the climax of the Durban conference, thousands of activists and delegates marched through the city waving placards reading ‘Kill All Jews’ and ‘The Good Things Hitler Did’.”
― Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power

“Invariably, identical facts provoke starkly different interpretations.”
― Tom Bower, Branson: A Provocative Biography Revealing the Secret Business Practices of a Global Icon

“my name is recognised, my star meter is rising, my life is changing.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“Maria Pollia, her school’s theology teacher, remembered that Meghan was ‘unusually compassionate’. Thomas Markle could also take credit for the observation by the school’s head teacher,”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“In her fantasy, the unknown actress cast herself as a celebrity coping with the chore of recognition and being pestered for photos.117 In reality, little had changed since she left school.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“wellness. During her time in Malta, she did not speak”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors

“I choose them both because these worlds can, in fact, coexist.’158”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“Meghan has outgrown you, just as she outgrew me.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“The heir demanded that Andrew be evicted from Royal Lodge and be stripped of his title as prince. The alternative, Charles was told, was a crisis with untold consequences for the monarchy. Charles was given no alternative. Suddenly, legal constraints were no longer a barrier. The King simply signed a letters patent.”
― Tom Bower, Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family - The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

“Although Thomas knew that Meghan’s letter had not influenced the executives’ decision – there was no evidence that her letter was even read – he encouraged her conviction that the change was her personal victory.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“His Nigerian hosts agreed. Mysterious forces had combined to kill Harry’s pregnant mother.”
― Tom Bower, Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family - The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

“Booked for the film, she arrived in London amid acrimony that her demand for first-class transatlantic fares and luxury accommodation had been rejected.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors

“This type of work feeds my soul.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“Meghan, said Oprah, had been the target of ‘constant criticism [and] blatant sexist and racist remarks by British tabloids’. As she spoke, the screen was covered by a spread of apparently racist headlines in the Daily Mail and other British newspapers. The word ‘niggling’ was highlighted as causing offence, although critics noted the sixteenth-century Scandinavian origin of the word has no connection to race.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors

“married and a child was born in Malta in 1862. To give the story greater attraction, Mary Bird was said to have been employed as a cook in 1856 at Windsor Castle. Harman had no reason to question Meghan or her suggestion that she travel to Malta with Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne. Elle”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors

“speech”
― Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power

“bewildered”
― Tom Bower, Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family - The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller

“Until recently, she never suggested suffering any sense of exclusion.”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“After the publication of a report in 1967 by Bridget Plowden, an amateur educationalist, describing primary schooling, Britain’s education system had become an ideological battleground. Masked by a scattering of platitudes about improving schools, Plowden recommended the destruction of traditional education. Children, she wrote, should no longer sit in rows of desks but instead gather in groups around tables to encourage self-learning. She also recommended that the eleven-plus examination, a three-part test (English, maths and intelligence) taken in one day that irrevocably determined a child’s educational fate – either to blossom in a grammar school or be consigned to failure in a secondary modern school – should be abandoned. Grammar schools should be replaced by non-selective comprehensives that mixed children of all standards. With cross-party support, successive Labour and Conservative governments implemented her recommendations.”
― Tom Bower, Broken Vows: Tony Blair The Tragedy of Power

“To the villagers’ surprise, after Meghan was filmed with the children playing under the clean water bursting from the tap, she disappeared with Gabor Jurina. For hours Jurina photographed the perfectly coiffured actress hugging, squeezing and smiling with the village children. Each pose was followed by a change of clothing. ‘Meghan is a true humanitarian,’ Lara Dewar would say. Speaking of Meghan’s ‘authenticity’, Dewar praised her involvement with the children, letting them sit on her lap for the photographer.191 Once she returned to the village, Meghan was filmed admiring children painting images of their lives on paper supplied by the charity. The Watercolor Project, conceived by Matt Hassell’s staff, illustrated the value of the charity’s work to supply clean water. Strangely, Dewar would wrongly claim that Meghan was the ‘creator’ of the Project.192 Throughout the four-day trip Meghan was impeccably considerate to the accompanying team. She ensured there would be no repeat of her UN experience.193”
― Tom Bower, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors

“Moderate MPs hated McDonnell even more than they did Corbyn.”
― Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power

“Mao, she said, deserved praise for ‘doing more good than harm’.”
― Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power

“a ‘dodgy politician’ and a ‘cynical manipulator’. ‘He’s clever enough to deceive people without them knowing it,”
― Tom Bower, Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power