The best books, films and TV of 2021
From Robert Maxwell to WeWork and The Great Gatsby, it’s been a strong year, says Matthew Partridge
The best films and TV shows
Thanks to near-zero interest rates, technological optimism and a bottomless pit of venture capital and private equity money, there’s been a huge boom in “unicorns” – technology companies valued at $1bn or more. No business has epitomised this more than WeWork, which rose to a valuation of $47bn at one point, before collapsing into near-bankruptcy. WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a
$47 Billion Unicorn (available from Amazon), tells the story, focusing on the controversial founder, Adam Neumann.
There are parts of the story that could have benefited from more detail, especially the boom in venture capital, and the fact that Neumann managed to walk away with a fortune is relegated to a footnote. But the documentary does an excellent job of telling this modern-day morality tale with pace, giving a sense of the optimism, energy and ultimately desperation that surrounded the company.
Just months before the uprising that removed him from power and resulted in his death, the Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi sent billions in cash to South Africa for safekeeping. The Hunt For
Gaddafi’s Billions (available via BBC iPlayer) looks at the global treasure hunt for the missing cash. However, the real story isn’t the money, but the divisions that remain in modern Libya after a decade of civil war, as well as the relationship between Gaddafi and South Africa’s elite. Elections are due shortly, but this film makes it clear why many Libyans remain sceptical about hopes for a lasting peace.
The best business books
During his lifetime, media baron Robert Maxwell was rarely out of the headlines, due to his business feuds, publicity stunts and larger-than-life persona. However, shortly after he was found floating in the sea after disappearing from his yacht, his business empire was revealed to be a sham, with both investors and Mirror Group pensioners ending up out of pocket. Fall: The
Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston (Penguin, £9.99) attempts to unravel the truth behind a person who rose from a small Czechoslovakian village to become a war hero, MP, tycoon and finally disgraced fraudster.
The book leaves some intriguing threads, especially regarding his relationship with the various intelligence services, hanging. Preston could also have provided a bit more detail about the exact moment when
Maxwell’s business empire started to implode. However, the book is a compulsively readable account of one of the most controversial figures of the 1980s and is told with a large amount of energy. Indeed, while Preston makes it clear that Maxwell was clearly a monster, bullying and manipulating people in order to get his way, there was something almost pitiable about his final years, which were filled with compulsive eating and paranoia.
Books by financiers are usually rather dry and worthy. Fortunately, The Dealmaker: Lessons from a Life in Private Equity by Guy Hands (Random House Business, £20) proves to be the exception. This is down to the fact that Hands is no ordinary financier. He moved into banking after the failure of a business he set up, and he arrived in the industry just as the Big Bang was transforming the City of London, becoming one of the first major private equity pioneers. This led him to become involved in a variety of deals, with stories including trying to recover money from the Japanese Yakuza and having Russian oligarchs threaten his life, before finally meeting his match when he took over the music publisher EMI.
The best political books
At the moment all eyes are on whether the new Omicron variant of SARS-Cov-2 represents a genuine threat that could push us back to square one, or – as increasingly seems likely – represents its mutation into something that may be more transmissible, but less lethal (at least for those fully vaccinated). However, irrespective of what happens, hard questions need to be asked about some of the early policy decisions. Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle
with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott (Mudlark, £20) deals with the UK’s initial response to the pandemic from its emergence in Wuhan at the end of 2019 to the start of the second wave in autumn 2020.
As you might expect, the authors are unimpressed with the response, which at one point left Britain with the highest official death toll, despite one of the harshest lockdowns. While the success of the vaccination programme, and problems in other countries, means that Britain’s relative performance has improved since then, they identify a series of policy failures, including an ineffective test and trace system and the surprising reluctance to close down borders in time. While
far from the final word, this is definitely worth reading if you want to understand the virus.
A very different perspective on the crisis is provided in A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, by Laura Dodsworth (Pinter & Martin, £9.99). Dodsworth argues that throughout the crisis the government and public health bodies have used a range of behavioural techniques and propaganda to bully the population into compliance and squelch debate. While we don’t necessarily agree with all her conclusions, especially her tendency to see conspiracy instead of incompetence, recent events highlight the importance of subjecting official assertions to some scrutiny, rather than just blindly accepting them.
The best investment books
Relatively few investment books are aimed at those under 35, probably because they have less money to invest. However, spiralling property prices and the decline of workplace pensions mean those in Generation Z, and younger Millennials, are arguably more in need of good financial and investment advice than earlier generations. So Iona Bain deserves a lot of credit for writing Own It! (Harriman House, £12.99), which attempts to fill this gap by explaining what younger people need to do to get their finances in order, as well as providing information about the online tools that simplify the task.
Older readers may find the author’s use of slang a bit much, and she is a very big fan of both passive and sustainable investing – so don’t expect to see much advice about picking individual shares. Still, her advice is generally sensible and she has a talent for breaking down the basics of investing for an audience that has been previously neglected. Those who have just graduated from university, are looking to save up in order to get onto the property ladder, or just want to grasp the basics of investing will definitely get a lot from reading this book.
The last few years have seen cryptocurrencies move from the fringes of investing into the
mainstream, with some younger investors now more interested in getting into bitcoin, or its many rivals, than owning individual shares. Still, before you rush out to join them, you might want to take a look at Crypto Wars: Faked Deaths, Missing Billions and Industry Disruption
by Erica Stanford (Kogan
Page £14.99). Although not technically a guide to investing, this look at some of the most notorious digital scams is a timely reminder that you need to be on your guard when investing in crypto.
Other notable books
The late John Stonehouse was a character who dipped his toe in the worlds of politics, espionage and business – and made a mess of them all. After briefly serving in the cabinet as postmaster general, Stonehouse later faked his own death while on a
business trip to Miami, before being arrested in Australia a few weeks later. Stonehouse: Cabinet Minister, Fraudster,
Spy by Julian Hayes (Robinson, £25) looks at the whole sorry saga, which ruined the lives of those who trusted Stonehouse, including the author’s father Michael Hayes (Stonehouse’s nephew). It also paints a portrait of Britain in the twilight of the late 1960s and 1970s.
The implosion of the funds run by Neil Woodford, previously regarded as the UK’s star manager, had a big impact on many ordinary investors. When The Fund Stops: The Untold Story Behind the Downfall of Neil Woodford, Britain’s Most Successful Fund Manager by David Ricketts (Harriman House, £14.99) uses interviews with Woodford’s colleagues and friends to gives us a look at his career and what
happened behind the scenes as his fund collapsed. It is a well-researched reminder that a dose of scepticism about star fund-managers might be in order – particularly when those stars head off in a new direction. Built on a Lie: The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England’s
Money by Owen Walker (Penguin Business, £20) also covers the Woodford scandal. However, Walker takes a broader perspective, seeing Woodford as symptomatic of an asset management industry that still charges too much and delivers too little. While his account downplays the responsibility that those who invested in the funds had for their bad decisions, it provides a very good overview of the wider context to the failure, which makes it an ideal complement to Ricketts’ book.