Chris Swinson is a Visiting Fellow at Durham University Business School and a former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Chris spent a large part of his professional career investigating frauds and their consequences.

• AbbreviationsPeople Acknowledgements1. Coming to London2. Clarence finds his feet3. 1914: The coming of war4. Hatry surfs a boom5. Coming down to earth6. Arthur Collins to the rescue7. Amalgamating department stores8. Hatry turns 409. Keeping up appearances in 192910. Keeping the plates spinning11. The spinning plates crash12. The trial13. The prison years14. Hatchards15. After Hatchards16. ReflectionsIndex

"Clarence Hatry was a clever outsider, whose moneymaking alchemy - mixing genuinely productive innovations with tax avoidance and sailing legally close to the wind - attracted many City insiders and business vendors. In 1921 it made a peerage seem attainable. His final resort to fraud in 1929 brought a lengthy prison sentence, yet still left him with loyal sympathisers. Dr Swinson is the shrewd, engaged and balanced biographer that such a complex larger-than-life character requires: this will be the definitive study." — Leslie Hannah, Professor Emeritus of Business History, London School of Economics, U.K."Chris Swinson’s deep research has produced a biography of Clarence Hatry that is not only authoritative in its unravelling of corporate misdeeds; it is also an elegant study of Hatry’s social milieu and a light-and-shade portrait of a fascinating fraudster." — Martin Vander Weyer, Business Editor, The Spectator"A well-written page turner about a larger-than-life company promoter whose life story certainly beats fiction hands down." — Janette Rutterford, Professor of Financial Management, Open University, U.K.