Book description
Thomas Lipton burst onto the national scene in 1897, the year of
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The Princess of Wales had launched a
£30,000 fund to provide a Jublilee dinner for the poor, but, with
only weeks to go, no more than £5,000 had been subscribed. Lipton
saved the day by writing a cheque for £25,000. The annonymous gift
created massive press speculation and even greater publicity when the
identity of the donor leaked out two days later. Lipton's generosity
earned him a knighthood and propelled him into society at the highest
level, a personal friend of the future King and Queen.
Many of the myths that surrounded Lipton in the latter part of his
life were created at this time and would be fixed for ever in his
autobiography, published shortly after his death in 1931. Until now,
what we know of Sir Thomas Lipton, grocery millionaire and yachtsman,
is what he chose to tell the world about himself. Now literally
detective James Mackay has uncovered the true story of one of the turn
of the century's most extrordinary, larger-than-life characters, a
story which is indefinitely more dramatic than the accepted version.
Virtually everything Lipton tells us about himself is now shown to
be untrue - even the origins of his family, his name, his date of
birth and the place where he was born. The man who was hailed as the
world's most eligible bachelor (his name was linked romantically with
Rose Fitzgerald, the future mother of John F. Kennedy) had at least
two skeletons in the closet - a youthful indescretion which led to a
forced marriage, and a homosexual affair which lasted for thirty years.
As a self-publicist he was a genius, and this was the key to his
remarkable success. Beginning with a small shop in Glasgoe in 1871 he
created a nationwide grocery chain second to none. In the process, he
revolutionised the grocery retail trade, dealing direct with producers
and eventually controlling production himself, with tea estates in
Ceylon and meat-packing plants in Chicago. He combined a flair for
organisation with superb showmanship, with stunts such as five-ton
cheeses stuffed with gold sovereigns. In 1898 his company went public
in one of the most successful share issues in stockmarket history.
Lipton developed an interest in yachting which he pursued with the
same single-mindedness as his business ventures. Between 1898 and 1930
he challenged for the America's Cup with a succession of yachts called
Shamrock, but the rules of the race were heavily weighted in
favour of the American defenders. The saga of his challenges, his near
triumphs and the disappointments that would have destroyed a less
heroic figure has become the most stirring in the annals of sport, and
provides a fitting conclusion to the life of a maverick and outsider
who was also one of the most colourful and flamboyant tycoons of all time.
James Mackay is an award-winning author and historian, and is widely
regarded as the world
'
s greatest authority on the life an works of Robert Burns. As well as
his definitive biography
Burns
, winner of the Saltire Award for Scottish Book of the Year, he has
published accounts of the lives of the great Scottish patriot William
Wallace and the Irish statesman Michael Collins. He is also the author
of biographies of the celebrated detective Allan Pinkerton (
The Eye
Who Never Slept
), the poet Robert Service (
Vagabond of Verse
), Alexander Graham Bell (
Sounds Out of Silence
) and Andrew Carnegie (
Little Boss
).
