Cityscrape

Kathleen Burk

• The Barlow Clowes Affair by Lawrence Lever
  Macmillan, 278 pp, £17.50, February 1992, ISBN 0 333 51377 0
• For whom the bell tolls: The Lesson of Lloyd’s of London by Jonathan Mantle
  Sinclair-Stevenson, 358 pp, £18.00, June 1992, ISBN 1 85619 152 4
• The City of London: Continuity and Change, 1850-1990 by Ranald Michie
  Macmillian, 238 pp, £30.00, January 1992, ISBN 0 333 55025 0

The City of London has always had a streak of lawlessness, partly because great fortunes could be made and partly because regulation has been relatively light. Advantage has repeatedly been taken of the latter, and certainly the past few years have seen a series of scandals, notably Lloyd’s, Guinness, Barlow Clowes, BCCI and now Maxwell. Indeed, Maxwell bids fair to be one of the best. Robert Maxwell was a rogue of the first order, but no one can say that we were not warned: in 1971 the Department of Trade and Industry warned that he was ‘not a fit and proper person to have charge of a public company’. Not the least interesting question is why, with that sort of record, banks were so eager to lend large sums of money to him.