Tom Bower

Thomas Michael Bower, commonly known as Tom Bower, is a prolific British writer, former BBC journalist, and television producer whose investigative work has spanned more than five decades. Born in London on 28 September 1946 to Jewish refugees from Prague, he grew up amid the aftermath of World War II and was educated at the William Ellis School before studying law at the London School of Economics, where he briefly practiced as a barrister for the National Council of Civil Liberties and earned the nickname "Tommy the Red" for his Marxist leanings. In 1970 he entered the BBC as a researcher on the current‑affairs programme 24 Hours, quickly advancing to reporter and then producer on the flagship series Panorama, a role he held from 1975 until 1987, and he remained with the corporation until 1995, honing a reputation for hard‑hitting interviews and exposés. After leaving the BBC, Bower turned to writing books, debuting with the groundbreaking Blind Eye to Murder (1980), an exposé of post‑war failures to bring Nazi criminals to justice, followed by a series of unauthorized biographies of some of the most powerful and controversial figures of the late twentieth and early twenty‑first centuries, including Robert Maxwell, Mohamed Al‑Fayed, Conrad Black, Richard Branson, Jeremy Corbyn, and Boris Johnson. His investigative style often provoked legal battles, most notably lawsuits from Maxwell, Branson, and Richard Desmond, yet he persisted, defending his work on the principle that truth should not be silenced by intimidation. Bower’s book Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed and the Souring of British Football won the 2003 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, cementing his status as a leading chronicler of power and corruption. Beyond his professional achievements, he has been married since 1985 to Veronica Wadley, Baroness Fleet, former editor of the London Evening Standard, and together they have four children, living in London where Bower continues to research, write, and comment on the lives of the elite, offering readers a blend of meticulous research, narrative flair, and unapologetic critique.