Bonfire of the Murdochs, Gabriel Sherman in Conversation with Juanita Phillips

Date: Tuesday 6th October
Time: 6-8pm (doors open at 5.30pm, come early for a drink with a view over Avalon Beach)
Location: Avalon Beach Surf Club
Tickets: $55
Buy Tickets Here

When Rupert Murdoch made a fateful decision about who should inherit his media colossus, he believed that pitting his children against each other would produce the most capable heir. Twenty-five years later, that gamble would tear apart one of the world’s most powerful families and trigger a multi-billion dollar reckoning in a succession battle featuring betrayals, lawsuits, and revenge plots.

In Bonfire of the Murdochs, bestselling author Gabriel Sherman tells the inside story of this epic family war, one whose seeds

were planted a half-century ago in Australia when the complicated patriarch left his homeland to conquer the world and please the ghost of his judgmental father. That quest culminated in a media empire that controlled Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and tabloids on three continents, which wielded more political and cultural power than any single company in modern times.

But Rupert’s plan to rip up the secret trust controlling his empire and anoint his conservative firstborn son Lachlan as successor set him on a collision course with his three more liberal children. What price would Rupert pay to secure his legacy? For the aging patriarch, this would be his final and most personal deal.

Based on interviews with more than 150 sources, Bonfire of the Murdochs is a richly textured narrative where each child plays their predestined role in a blood feud that explodes in a courtroom showdown. There, Murdoch’s children weaponize his own secrets against him. It is a tragedy Shakespeare would have appreciated, where getting everything you want costs everything you love.

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Gabriel Sherman is an award-winning journalist and screenwriter. He has been covering the Murdochs since 2008. He is the author of the New York Times  bestseller The Loudest Voice in the Room about the late FoxNews CEO Roger Ailes. He is the screenwriter of the twice Oscar-nominated film The Apprentice and has covered national politics for New York magazine and Vanity Fair. He lives in London with his wife, son, and daughter plus their dog and cat.

In her 40-plus years in journalism, Juanita Phillips has experienced both sides of the Murdoch media empire. She worked for News Corporation newspaper and TV businesses as a reporter/presenter, then moved to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as it became the target of relentless News Corporation attacks. Having (narrowly) survived the Murdoch-fuelled culture war against the ABC, she now lives in Avalon Beach and gets her news from a wide variety of sources.