"Now, where were we…?"

In 2013, one of Australia's more exclusive schools was compiling profiles of its most notable alumni for a book. It asked me whether I'd write a few chapters and showed me a list of businessmen, sportsmen, scientists and even prime ministers to choose from. They were all interesting people, but to my mind there was only one criterion. Who did I want to meet? There he was, James Oswald Fairfax AC, the one-time heir to a media empire and among Australia’s greatest philanthropists. This was the person who usurped his father to take control of the country's oldest broadsheet newspapers and who, in turn, was forced out by his half-brother, in part to avenge the way their father was treated. It's one of the epic sagas of Australian media history, involving a supposedly scheming wife who raised a son to resent his cousins and half-brother. It reads like the plot for a tragic opera, and the events shaped much of Australia’s modern media landscape.