Harold Robbins – författare

Attacked, damned, praised and read around the world, THE CARPETBAGGERS was first published in 1961 and shelved high enough that the kids couldn't get their hands on it. Set in the aviation industry and Hollywood in the 1930s, it is said the lead protaganist Jonas Cord is based on Bill Lear and Howard Hughes. It is the original sex and money blockbuster: a cracking story driven relentlessly forward by the sheer power and boldness of Robbins' writing.

Sexy, outrageous and irresistible, Tycoonis Harold Robbins at his rip-roaring best. Jack Lear rises from a modest Jewish background to take on the WASP world, but never quite feels he's succeeded in his ambition to be accepted as one of them. Making his fortune as a pioneering radio and television broadcaster and founding a landmark network isn't enough - nor is the money, fame and women who go with it. He continues to hunger for what he cannot have. Here is a tale that only Harold Robbins could tell: of Jack's torrid relationship with his first wife, a WASP social heiress; of his affairs with everybody from chamber maids to duchesses; of his second marriage to a world-class beauty and society figure; and ultimately of his life-long struggle to make his network No. 1, and to give it a sense of class that sets it apart from all the others.