IF EVER I BECOME a multi-millionaire newspaper owner and end up being charged with defrauding my shareholders, I will pray that Tom Bower does not write my biography. (Since the chance of either of those things happening is zero, I’m probably OK.) Bower’s stock-in-trade is taking a sledgehammer to crack a large block of concrete. His biographical subjects tend to deserve what comes their way. Robert Maxwell, corrupt football officials, Geoffrey Robinson, Klaus Barbie, even Gordon Brown, all merit the kicking that his books deliver.

He is relentless in the destruction of his victims. Where three blows might do, he can take 300. Where evidence of wrong-doing exists, he not only presents it; he poaches it, grills it, fries it, roasts it, trusses it and serves with stuffing.

His latest book, about Lord and Lady Black of Crossharbour, the former Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, is not biography, as the publishers bill it. It is, rather, an indictment. Biographies are rounded portraits, with light and shade, nuance and subtlety.

Bower’s portrait is relentless from first page to last. His Black is a scheming, bullying villain. His Amiel is a strumpet of irresistible allure. Both are pretty nasty. Both deserve their come-uppance as authors of their own fall.

But some 400 pages later, we know nothing more about their characters than we did at the start. We are simply provided with a mass of evidence to demonstrate how thoroughly vain they both are.

Not that it isn’t a rip-roaring read. Tales of the rich and famous behaving monstrously have always been popular and Bower tells his tale well.

He has, however, an annoying penchant for quoting supposed dialogue between people that he cannot possibly know, such as between Black and his father. And he seems obsessed by Amiel’s breasts (he quotes one description of them as “big and beautiful. Like lovely fried eggs”, and they are a constant theme). There are also careless errors. Roger Hertog become Herzog; Pamela Harriman is referred to as “une femme horizontale” when she was, rather, known as “une grande horizontale”.

And there is something important missing. Black may indeed be a scoundrel. But he is other things, too — not least the author of a fine biography of FDR, which shows his intellectual reach. And Amiel is more than just a social climber with fabulous breasts. She is, in my view, one of the finest columnists of her era.

Without that context, Black is just A. N. Other corporate raider who happened to own some newspapers (his Hollinger Inc controlled the Chicago Sun-Times and The Jerusalem Post as well as his ownership of the Telegraph titles in Britain).

But what makes his story interesting is precisely that dissonance — that he was a man who moved in and was listened to in the most influential of circles but who, if the charges laid against him are proved when they come to trial next year, was also a giant conman.

We get the stories of his boorishness and her rudeness, but what perspective there is on their behaviour is lost in the unremitting attack. Sometimes, less is more.

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