Anna Murdoch Mann: 'He was hard, ruthless and determined'
Three years after her divorce from Rupert, Anna Murdoch Mann has finally broken her silence. Yes, she's bitter. And no, he doesn't come out of it very well.
In a long-awaited confessional carried in the Australian Women's Weekly yesterday Anna Murdoch Mann, the former wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, washed some of the family's dirty linen in public, courtesy of a rival publisher.
In a candid interview carried by the Kerry Packer-owned flagship monthly, Mrs Mann, now remarried at 57, came clean about their divorce and her former hu*****and's misrepresentation of his relationship with his third wife, Wendi Deng.
"He behaved badly," she said. "However, for my children's sake, I have said nothing... I've waited all this time for him to make it right again, but he never took the opportunity."
The much-rumoured divorce settlement from the 70-year-old tycoon, who is expecting his fifth child with Ms Deng, remains mysterious. When asked if she had received A$1bn (about £400m), she reportedly politely declined to comment.
But she did say she didn't want any of their three children, Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, who all occupy important media positions, to take over the News Corp international empire from their father, claiming there would be "heartbreak and hardship" over the succession.
Mrs Mann, whose 31-year marriage to Murdoch ended when they separated in April 1998 and divorced two months later, said she was talking to an Australian magazine because of all the concerned enquiries from people there wishing her well. "I thought this was a nice way of letting everyone know I'm OK. More than OK."
She described her state of shock at the divorce, her wish not to appear as a victim and her feeling of "coming out of a deep mental illness". She also detailed the way that, despite reports of an amicable separation, she was unceremoniously dumped as a non-executive director of News Corp. Of her once-admired partner, who she helped to secure a papal knighthood in 1998, she said: "I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I loved died a long time ago. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him. But the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way."
Extracts from the "world exclusive" by award-winning Sydney journalist David Leser, himself the son of Bernard Leser of Condé Nast publishing, were carried prominently in the rival Fairfax newspapers, but only modestly in some News Ltd titles. News Ltd executives have so far declined to comment on the story. The interview was conducted last month at Mrs Mann's home in the fashionable Hamptons, north of New York, which she shares with her financier hu*****and William Mann. The spread included an array of Hello! magazine-style photos of Anna with her antique chairs, Mexican paintings and lavish gardens, but pointedly included no file shots of her with her long-time hu*****and.
First, she scotched the Murdoch spin that his relationship with Wendi Deng, the daughter of a Chinese factory director and Murdoch-owned Star TV executive, had begun after their separation in 1988.
"I think that Rupert's affair with Wendi Deng – it's not an original plot – was the end of the marriage. His determination to continue with that. I thought we had a wonderful, happy marriage. Obviously, we didn't." She went on: "I don't want to get too personal about this... but [he] was extremely hard, ruthless and determined that he was going to go through with this, no matter what I wanted or what I was trying to do to save the marriage. He had no interest in that whatsoever."
Mrs Mann also claims that she was forced off the board of News Corp. "I wasn't given a choice. I was told," she told Leser. "Well, there's no point being there if you're no use and it's embarrassing to everyone else on the board. And my children were involved, too. My son was on the board. Lachlan. So I thought it was better to be dignified and resign."
Mrs Mann, born Anna Torv, who was brought up in humble circumstances in Glasgow in 1944 to a dry cleaner and merchant seaman, had first joined the Murdoch stable when she was an ambitious 18-year-old on the Sydney Daily Mirror.
She said in a farewell address to the board: "This was not just the end of my marriage. It was the end of a whole life . I said I wished News Corp the best and that Rupert's children were my children too, and that I had always tried to do my best for News Corporation... and that I was very sad to be leaving."
That day, she had lunch with the widower William Mann, whom she would marry within 12 months. "I knew it was going to be a bad day and that I needed something nice," she said of the date. "It was all very proper... so, one door closes and another door opens. Sometimes you just have to open that door."
Mrs Mann was asked about her experiences in the UK where, in the 1970s, her hu*****and's perceived intent to take his newspapers, including The Sun, downmarket was met with social ostracism. There was also the kidnapping and murder of Muriel McKay, the wife of a News Ltd executive, who was abducted in the mistaken belief that she was Mrs Murdoch.
"It seems like it happened to someone else. That sort of period was somebody else... another lifetime. But I'm sure that it did have an effect on me, in the way I felt about England."
It was no secret that Anna wanted her hu*****and to take it eas
