George Munster, a distinguished Australian journalist, died late in 1984, a year before his book was first published in Sydney. Since then, Rupert Murdoch has abandoned satellite television in America, expanded it in Europe, bought 20^th Century-Fox and a chain of American television stations, sold The Village Voice, made a fortune out of ‘greenmail’, lost a fortune on the exchange markets, hired the Pope as a columnist, become an American citizen, and gone back to battle once again with the London print unions.

As Munster observed, Murdoch won’t sit still. The only time he has slowed down since inheriting his first newspaper, Adelaide in 1952, was during the recession in 1982-83. He had trouble with high interest rates and heavy losses at The Times and the New York Post – but still managed to buy the Boston Herald. All this frantic activity is a great strain on his biographers.

But people who write about public figures in the full flood of their careers will always confront this problem. Events will overtake them. If they want their books to have any sort of shelf-life, they contribute something new, and go beyond mere narrative, explain the man behind the story and otter some clues as to where he might go next.

Munster hardly tries. Indeed Murdoch is sometimes no more than a bit player in his own biography, which is padded out with digressions on Sir Keith Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, Clay Felker, Kim Philby and the history of the Australian press.

Murdoch has shown, from his earliest days in Southern Australia, an astonishing ability to guess correctly what opportunities would come up in the future in newspapers and television – and later on, in a dozen other fields. He found not only correct strategy to win control and revive dying papers or TV stations, in Sydney, London and America, but saw beyond to the next stage. He always knew what to do with their success. Munster gives a thorough description of the financial manoeuvring that brought Murdoch his billions and his power, but offers no insight into why Murdoch is so much better at it than his rivals.

Munster describes Murdoch’s skill at turning government regulations to his profit. One trick was to use his newspapers to back the winners in elections and then to use his political trends to win commercial concessions. He developed the techniques in Australia, acquiring and keeping television stations, an airline, gambling, ranching, mineral and oil concessions. In Britain, he won his most spectacular victory by giving vociferous support to the Conservatives in 1979. In exchange, the Thatcher government waived the monopoly laws to allow him to buy The Times and The Sunday Times. In the United States, the rules state that he must sell the New York Post and the Chicago Sun-Times because he has bought television stations in those cities. The record suggests that he will find a way around that obligation, if he wants to, by calling in the chips he has earned with the Reagan administration.

But he didn’t get where he is just by sucking up to politicians. He is always ready to take a risk, accept an impossible challenge and bounce back from a defeat. A few years after inheriting The Adelaide News, he offered to buy out its main competitor. He was rebuffed. He was rebuffed later, when he first tried to buy into Sydney television. But then he made the first of a series of purchases of decayed newspapers from senile newspaper dynasties, Mirror newspapers in Sydney. That was eventually followed by the News of the World, the Sun, the Sydney Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The New York Post, The Times and Sunday Times, and various American papers.

They were all in runs and he turned them all to his profit – not always direct monetary profit. The Times is a goldmine, even when it is losing millions. So is the Post. Influence is bankable, as the Lords Beaverbrook and Thomson had demonstrated before him.

Murdoch doesn’t always win, of course. He failed to buy The Observer, the Melbourne Herald, and the New York Daily News. He wrote off a large investment in American satellite television. Sometimes he made money out of losing: he failed to buy Warner communications (the film company) and St Regis, a paper company, and was paid off to a tune of £30 or $40 million each time.

Another quality is his persistence. He started The National Star in 1973, an American supermarket weekly, the most ridiculously bad of all his publications. It was years before it turned to profit, but he never abandoned hope, and learnt from his mistakes. It is now doing very well. He has shown similar determination with The Australian, his boldest creation in the country, and with the New York Post.

A Paper Prince is best on Murdoch’s life and times in Australia. It is competent and thorough on the American story, but not nearly so good on Murdoch’s dealings in Britain. Munster thought Harold Evans a reliable source and offers no real analysis of Murdoch’s most remarkable journalistic success, the Sun.

Munster does not give any credit to the journalistic competence of the writers and editors at the Sun compared with their competitors (the same point applies to the Australian popular papers, and to the New York Post). He is perfectly willing to blame Murdoch tor all his papers’ many failings, but never credits him for their journalistic achievements.

The Sydney Daily Mirror, the London Sun and the New York Post may all slant the news, publish wildly sensational stones and in Australia and London, indulge in frank pornography, but they handle the news faster and better than most of their competitors. They do so because Murdoch insists that they should, and finds the editors who will do the job for him.

Murdoch has moved far beyond newspapers in Australia and the United States (though not in Britain), and the next chapter in the saga will concern the development of a fourth American television network, fed by the movie library and film-making capacity of Twentieth Century-Fox. It’s a vaster market than any he has conquered before, but not new to him. He now knows the American market. and how to do business there, as well as anyone. He has run television stations since 1958, and has a movie company. He co-produced Gallipoli.

The only real danger is financial: he paid for Metromedia, the TV chain which has stations in five major US cities, with ‘junk bonds’, funny money. His companies carry an immense weight of debt, and in a general recession, everything could come unravelled, like Citizen Kane in the movie.

This is Munster’s strongest suit. He describes the balancing act which enabled Murdoch to pyramid up his borrowings to pay for an unending series of expansive purchases. He is like a cyclist: all is well so longs he keeps forward. The latest events in the US and in London suggest that he is in no danger of falling off.