Virgin King

Inside Richard Branson's Business Empire

Tim Jackson

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1995, 405 pages

ISBN: 0-00-638267-3

Keywords: Biography

Last modified: July 28, 2021, 11:22 p.m.

Richard Branson is unique among today's folk heroes. Which other self-made British billionaire could lay claim to the highest esteem of our schoolchildren? Which other company chairman could be referred to by former BA Chairman Lord King as a 'pirate', having launched an airline largely on the profits of a pop song, and then go on to strike terror into the hearts of Coca-Cola and Pepsi by repackaging a branded cola? Only Branson. He is the everyman entrepreneur of our times: half marketing genius, half motivational wizard.

Virgin King explains how Branson started a mail-order record business in 1969 and ended up with a corporate conglomerate and riches beyond his dreams today. In the first fully independent, unauthorized account of one of the great success stories of our time, Tim Jackson reveals how a public-school drop-out has found the key to presenting aggressive business acumen with a friendly face. Virgin King is the compelling history of both a private business empire and the man at its centre.

  • Prologue: Concealing the Art
  1. 1969: Easy Work, Good Money
  2. One Per Cent of Tubular Bells
  3. Broken Bottles
  4. Media Mogul
  5. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
  6. Dear Randolph
  7. To Market, To Market
  8. 'Too Liberal a Use of the Lawyers'
  9. The Little Boys and Their Boats
  10. Hales and the Lionheart
  11. Enlightened Capitalism
  12. 'I've Got to Believe You're Serious about It'
  13. Hot Air
  14. Flying Across Two Oceans
  15. recovery in Woodstock Street
  16. A Man of Property
  17. Branson Succumbs to Takeover Fever
  18. Loos, Booze and Upper Class
  19. The Price of Privacy
  20. Playing at Retailing
  21. How John Thornton Earned His $3m
  22. The BA Bonus
  23. Heathrow Airport and the Slot Machine
  24. A Matter of Timing
  25. The £40m Wager

Reviews

Virgin King

Reviewed by Roland Buresund

OK ***** (5 out of 10)

Last modified: May 21, 2007, 2:47 a.m.

A book about Branson.

Comments

There are currently no comments

New Comment

required

required (not published)

optional

required

captcha

required