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Britsh Scandal: Maxwell Wonderly, Apple, Google, Spotify, etc

Hosts Alice Levine and Matt Forde return to their podcast, British Scandal, to shed new light on an old British mystery – the strange death, and life, of shady business mogul Robert Maxwell.

Maxwell was a Czech-born immigrant who tried his hardest to infiltrate the higher echelons of British society, to little avail. While his shrewd business sense and sheer force of will built him a publishing empire and briefly made him a member of parliament, he was never accepted by the people he so desperately wanted to impress.

British Scandal follows Maxwell as his obsession intensifies, risking the relationships with those closest to him; his devoted wife Betty, and their nine children, including his favourite, the now notorious Ghislaine, pictured with her father above. When Maxwell disapeared from his yacht (The Lady Ghislaine) in November 1991, the fallout from his death revealed the extent of the lengths he would go to achieve his ambitions, and his crimes quickly came to the surface. Most heinous was his theft of his employees pension funds to stop his failing businesses from going bankrupt.

The see-saw tone of British Scandal takes a bit of getting used to, and you can feel like you have whiplash as hosts Levine and Forde bounce between comedy and levity. Jokes about Maxwell and Betty’s sex life come thick and fast, as does tragic details of Maxwell’s past, such as most of his Czech family being murdered in Auschwitz, or the untimely early deaths of two of his children.

Despite that, the podcast is both entertaining and enlightening, offering clear insight into highly emotive stories that rocked the British public. With promise that this season will be an origin story for the Ghislaine Maxwell scandal, it’s well worth a listen.