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The world’s unhappiest billionaire was born on 12 April 1974, in a hospital in Vienna. He was named Markus. His mother was named Katja. His father remained at home. Home was number thirty-seven Neugrabenstrasse, an inauspicious flat on the top floor of a Viennese suburb. The flat may as well ha

The wedding was held at the Rancho del Cortes and Eva was one of twelve bridesmaids. The bride was the daughter of a wealthy benefactress of the women’s clinic Eva’s mother ran in Mexico and, for unknown reasons, Eva was asked to participate. It was a great honour, they were ‘society’, and i

At 8.20am every day, a woman with church hair climbs astride a bicycle. Not an ordinary bicycle, but a strange, fold-up contraption, built for the commuter of the 1980s to whip from a raincoat at London Bridge and zip over cobbles to the Strand. It labours heavily now through the leaves, its tiny wh

Chapter 1 The Duchy of Lancaster’s housing estate in Harrogate is described euphemistically by local estate agents as ‘The favoured Duchy Estate’. It was built towards the end of the Victorian era for the successful merchants of Harrogate’s booming spa town, and consists of large stone