There’s a lot and a little going on with octogenarian publisher Rupert Murdoch.
Nis second wife, Anna, has died at 81. She was the mother of his “Succession” children Lachlan, James, and Elisabeth.
In the 1980s, Anna Murdoch was a “name” we knew mostly from Liz Smith’s column in the New York Post. Liz was constantly throwing in plugs for her boss’s wife and the “novels” she published.
Rupert, now 94, was thirteen years older than Anna. But that didn’t stop him from taking a lover and new wife in Wendi Deng, who was even younger after. Anna divorced him in 1999. (They’d been married 23 years.) The settlement was said to be 1.7 billion pounds sterling. (Some say it was only $100 mil, which ain’t bad either!) It was reported to be the largest divorce settlement ever at that time. Anna must have signed quite the NDA because no one heard about her again.
I guess we would know more if we’d read Gabriel Sherman’s book about Murdoch called “Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family –– and the World.” Alas, no one read it. Published February 3rd, “Bonfire” is now at number 7,921 on amazon. Sherman’s book had almost no publicity. It feels like maybe Simon and Schuster killed it. Who knows?
Anyway, rest in peace Anna Murdoch (who married a couple more times after the divorce). You had your moment in the sun, that’s for sure.
