The Rich and Powerful go Shopping for Ghostwriters - Andrew Crofts
What do the global rich come to London for? To hire their butlers, to buy their art, to shop for clothes and houses – oh and the culture; they come for the culture. For a while we called it “soft power”. When we threw our Olympics opening party we flexed those muscles to their full extent and books and their characters were a mighty part of the show. There was Mary Poppins and Harry Potter of course, James Bond skydiving with the Queen, a host of characters who looked as if they had come straight from the pages of Dickens and declamations from the pens of Shakespeare and a variety of other poets. Was Jane Austen invited? I can’t remember but she should have been, if only for the wonderful inspiration she provided for Bridget Jones. In the eyes of the world London is the city of Byron and John Murray, T.S. Eliot and Faber, George Bernard Shaw and the Bloomsbury Group; so where else would you go to buy your ghostwriter? Robert Harris sealed our reputation a few...