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 A book about Richard Desmond remains unpublished.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
Tom Bower law at the London School of Economics, before working as a barrister for the National Council of Civil Liberties. In 1970, Bower joined the BBC as a researcher on the programme "24 Hours" before becoming a reporter on "Panorama". He was a producer on "Panorama" from 1975 until 1987. He left the BBC in 1995. Bower is married to Veronica Wadley, former editor of the London "Evening Standard", and has four children. Bower's second book was "Klaus Barbie: The Butcher of Lyon" (1984) which documented Klaus Barbie's war crimes during World War II as head of the Gestapo in Lyon,