ABSTRACT
On Wednesday 6 November 1991, the Daily Mirror published one of the most extraordinary editions in its 88-year history. Early the previous day Robert Maxwell, ‘Cap’n Bob’, the newspaper’s proprietor, had disappeared from the deck of his luxury motor yacht as it cruised around Tenerife in the Canary Islands. At teatime his 22-stone corpse was retrieved from the Atlantic and the Mirror’s obituary team swung into overdrive. Their efforts filled 15 complete pages in the 36-page tabloid that appeared on Wednesday morning. Maxwell was ‘The man who saved the Mirror’ according to a frontpage headline that set the tone for an embarrassingly effusive tribute to a ‘turbulent colossus’, a ‘publishing giant and world statesman’ who was ‘commander of every event in which he took part’.
