Robbins was the world's first playboy author and master of publicity. In March 1965, he had three novels on the British paperback bestseller list - Where Love Has Gone at No 1, The Carpetbaggers at No 3 and The Dream Merchants in sixth spot. BEGIN: Module - Main Heading With reported worldwide sales of 750m, Harold Robbins sold more books than JK Rowling, earned and spent $50m during his lifetime, and was as much a part of the sexual and social revolution as the pill, Playboy and pot. At the height of his success, Robbins had a mansion in Beverly Hills, a home in the south of France and a house in Acapulco. He owned a fleet of 14 cars, including a white Rolls-Royce and a number of Jensens, an exquisite art collection (Picasso, Chagall, Léger, Bernard Buffet) and two yachts, one moored in Los Angeles, the other in Cannes. After a drug overdose in 1984 he had a seizure in the process of which he shattered his hip. Confined to a wheelchair he spent his fortune on care and died $1million in debt.

'It is not quite proper to have printed The Carpetbaggers between the covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory.'