Lachlan Murdoch is supposed to be enjoying the 60th birthday celebration of The Australian this week. His father Rupert founded the paper in 1964 to fulfill his father Sir Keith Murdoch’s dream that Australia would one day have its own national newspaper.
But instead of that dynastic vision being feted in their homeland, the Murdochs are dealing with the aftermath of a bombshell revealing that they are a deeply fractured family—and showing just how far Rupert, 93, will go to protect his idea of dynasty. In this case, from beyond the grave.
I’m writing a biography of Rupert for Hachette’s Grand Central Publishing and got wind a few weeks ago that there was a kerfuffle over the family trust in the run-up to Rupert’s marriage—his fifth—to the Russian-born molecular biologist Elena Zhukova. I had presumed it had something to do with the arrival of a new wife.
