Hacked off

Rupert Murdoch is the kept woman of British politics. He inspires love, fear, paranoia and obsessive secrecy. Tony Blair suppressed the fact that he was godfather to Murdoch’s daughter, Grace. Gordon Brown wooed Murdoch but later declared war on him. Cameron smuggled him into Downing Street through the back door. Now, as his vast empire teeters, a breathless bulletin arrives from the desks of an Independent journalist, Martin Hickman, and a campaigning MP, Tom Watson. Their book covers the countless strands of the hacking story with admirable gusto and thoroughness.

The tone is combative but fair-minded throughout, though when Watson himself pops up it becomes melodramatic and silly. His attacks on the Murdoch press had earned him the ‘pathological dislike’ of News International’s chief executive, Rebekah Brooks. ‘Call this man off,’ she once begged Tony Blair. ‘He’s mad.’ At times Watson says he feared he might be assassinated.

Brooks emerges as a character of rare ambition and charisma.