There’s a scene in the first episode of House of Maxwell – the BBC’s three-parter on the life and crimes of businessman Robert Maxwell and, later, his daughter Ghislaine – where they interview the buyer of a bit of family memorabilia.
A couple of years after Robert Maxwell’s death, his estate was apparently so skint that the entire contents of the family’s stately home in Oxfordshire were auctioned off by Sotheby’s – paintings, furniture, even family pictures. This punter explained that he’d bought a nice but fairly ordinary-looking table lamp, but that when he’d got it home and removed the shade, he had discovered a couple of microphones attached to it. Maxwell, legendarily paranoid, had been eavesdropping on his own family for evidence of disloyalty. Even Ghislaine, his favourite.
