Onassis intrigue lacks happy ending.

(From Lloyds List)

Byline: A very different view of Lloyd's List's man of the millennium is offered by a new biography of Aristotle Onassis, writes Neville Smith

HOW, in all conscience, can one review this book? As Lloyd's List's man of the millennium, Aristotle Socrates Onassis should be unimpeachable the most gilded of the golden Greeks and inspirational figure to a generation of industry scions.

How, then, should we feel to learn that, in addition to the sharp practices well-known to the shipping industry, he was utterly corrupt, a serial womaniser who covered cash shortfalls by drug smuggling and was the man who bankrolled the assassination of Robert F Kennedy?

Peter Evans is the man who would have it so, curiously enough given his authorship of an authorised biography, Ari, which sought to enshrine Onassis' better-known achievements. But Evans has not just the chops and the contacts but an inside track on the story of the century.

Adjudged by friends and foes alike to have done a fair job in his previous book, Evans was nevertheless entranced by hints from Onassis' daughter, Christina, and long term business partner Yannis Georgakis that he had 'missed the really big story' of his extraordinary life.

The story, which Evans has diligently researched and cross-checked, centres on the mutual loathing of Onassis and the Kennedy clan which sprang from their first meeting in 1952, shortly after the 'circumvention' that brought Onassis 10 US war surplus tankers for a song.