Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge in 2012, the case was described as a "$2.5-million suit" and Bower said, "How can a convicted fraudster find a jury who will say that his reputation has been damaged by a book that says he's a fraudster?" A passing reference in the book to the British businessman, pornographer, and publisher Richard Desmond led to Desmond unsuccessfully suing Bower for libel in 2009. Desmond argued that the description in the book that he was "ground into the dust" when he had published an apology after Black had threatened to sue for libel had weakened his reputation. Notes References Conrad and
Tom Bower business affairs, and published biographies of him in 2000 and 2014. In 2001, Bower published "The Paymaster: Geoffrey Robinson, Maxwell and New Labour", a biography of the Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson. The book's evidence that Robinson had solicited a £200,000 business contract from Robert Maxwell led to Robinson being suspended from Parliament for three weeks as he had not disclosed the matter to an inquiry some years previously. Robinson denied receiving the money in question from Maxwell and denied that he had sought to mislead Parliament. In 2003, Bower won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for