FORTUNES SPEAR

Bevan Family Tree viii Kenrick/Chamberlain Family Tree x Sonnet II xiii INTRODUCTION: The Making of a Fraudster 1 CHAPTER ONE: A Kensington Wedding Capital and Industry 15 Pillars of Society 18 The Playing Fields of Eton 27 Hollow-ware and Oddwork 33 CHAPTER TWO: On 'Change The Black Sheep 41 The Junior Partner 46 Bad Examples 52 The Senior Partner 57 CHAPTER THREE: At Home Upper Grosvenor Street 71 The Veiled Politician 75 City Magnate and Don Juan 83 At Littlecote 86 CHAPTER FOUR: The City Equitable A Wartime Opportunity 93 Lords on the Board 97 Crack Oarsmen 107 A Nine Years' Wonder 111 CHAPTER FIVE: The Post-Armistice Boom The Lucky Englishman 117 A Craze for Speculation 122 Eminently Healthy 136 Wily Dundonians 139 Partners and Directors, 1918 - 22 147 CHAPTER SIX: Boom Turns to Bust Back from Brazil 149 The Twin Bastions 153 A False Prospectus 157 Hand-to-Mouth 161 CHAPTER SEVEN: Flight Ordered Abroad 169 Proofs of Debt 174 'Parle francais couramment' 179 All is Squared 182 CHAPTER EIGHT: Capture An Inspector Calls 193 'My Poor Wife!' 201 Homeward Bound 208 And Whose the Fault? 211 CHAPTER NINE: Trial At the Guildhall 216 Who was 'Someone?' 233 Window-dressing 238 Muddled Away 242 CHAPTER TEN: Misfeasance Mansell in the Dock 249 Wilful Neglect? 255 An Historic Judgment 262 Stung by a Tart 272 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Family Matters The Prison Librarian 279 Decree Absolute 282 The Bogus Major 287 Sheila's Wedding 290 CHAPTER TWELVE: Last Years What Happened to Hatry? 293 Russet and Asp 298 The PPRS 305 A Pauper's Grave 315 Exile 321 Acknowledgments 323 Bibliography 325 Index 329

A wonderfully vivid biography of the man responsible for one of the great City scandals. The world that Martin Vander Weyer recreates with a novelist's flair and historian s attention to detail may be long gone, but this very human morality tale of high talent and high connection fatally compromised by a flawed character is timeless. --David Kynaston, author of 'City of London: The History' Exciting stuff ... It is a rattling good yarn and leaves you wondering whether the man had a rotten core from the beginning or whether it was addiction to money and social position which seduced him into crime. It is a cautionary tale. --Martin Jacomb, 'The Spectator' This well-researched and well-written book is more than the story of a City scandal. It is a fascinating slice of social history and a rumination on fraud and folly. --Allan Massie, 'The Scotsman' 'Fortune's Spear' is a splendidly rich account of a fraud that both symbolises its own era and prefigures our own. Unlike many financial writers, Vander Weyer writes so clearly that even a financial illiterate like myself can just about grasp what he is getting at. He also has a wonderfully broad frame of cultural reference. --Craig Brown, Book of the Week, 'Daily Mail'

Martin Vander Weyer is Business Editor and Any Other Business columnist of The Spectator and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph, Mail on Sunday and other national newspapers. Before becoming a journalist, he was an investment banker in London, Brussels and the Far East. He is the author of Falling Eagle: The Decline of Barclays Bank (2000) and the editor and principal author of Closing Balances: Business Obituaries from the Daily Telegraph (2006).