Tom Bower Tom Bower Thomas Michael Bower (born 28 September 1946) is a British writer known for his investigative journalism and for his unauthorized biographies, often of business tycoons and newspaper proprietors. His books include unauthorised biographies of Robert Maxwell, Mohamed Al-Fayed, Conrad Black, and Richard Branson. A book about Richard Desmond remains unpublished. His book, "", won the 2003 William Hill Sports Book of the Year. Bower's parents were Jewish refugees who fled Prague after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and arrived in London later that same year. After attending the William Ellis School in Hampstead, Bower studied
Criminal libel The common law offences of seditious libel, defamatory libel, and obscene libel were abolished in England and Wales and Northern Ireland on 12 January 2010 when section 73 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 came into force, blasphemous libel having already been abolished in England and Wales on 8 July 2008 by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 created instead the offence of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their race or religion. Samoa's Crimes Act 2013 dropped reference to criminal libel, which had been on the statute