: Chris Hutchins, Peter Thompson
: Athina The Last Onassis
: Christopher Hutchins Ltd
: 9780957020757
: 1
: CHF 7.50
:
: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 258
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
ATHINA: The last Onassis By Chris Hutchins and Peter Thompson BY way of light relief as Greece comes face-to-face with financial meltdown, it's well worth visiting the story of Athina Onassis Roussel, who became the richest little girl in the world when she inherited unimaginable wealth from her heiress mother, Christina Onassis. This compelling book explores the legend of Athina's grandfather, the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and examines the legacy that became Athina's extraordinary birthright as The Last Onassis. No 20th-century sage features more great names than that of the Onassis dynasty; the Kennedys - including JFK and his widow Jacqueline, who became Onassis's second wife - the opera diva Maria Callas who longed to be the third; and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, with whom he fought a celebrated feud for control of Monte Carlo. The cast list is endless: the Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo, the politicians Sir Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon, the tycoons Stavros Niarchos and Howard Hughes and the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. .

PROLOGUE


HEIDI WITH
SHOULDER HOLSTERS


A GIRL OF JUST FOURTEEN summers should have little on her mind other than her academic progress and, perhaps even more importantly, the crush on her first sweetheart. Athina Onassis Roussel is doing well at the state school she attends in Lussy-sur-Morges, the peaceful Swiss village where she lives with her father and step-mother. She even has a boyfriend with whom she goes roller-blading. Sadly, however, neither can be said to be all that is on her young mind.

For, despite her modest weekly pocket money of 200 Swiss francs, Athina is the richest girl in the world, less than four years away from inheriting a fortune expected by then to be in excess of£5 billion. Those charged with the responsibility of protecting her from the pressures that such a vast legacy carries with it insist that she is leading the life of a normal young girl, although they are fully aware that with such a fortune comes the ever-present danger of kidnap. One who was once in the employ of her mother, the sad Christina Onassis, however, says that neither the gangly Swiss boy with wavy hair to whom she writes sweet notes, her beloved horse Arco, her golden labrador Nicky, her pet rabbits, nor her collection of Spice Girls records, can displace the torment in her heart. Even when she smiles— and she smiles a lot— the worry of what life has in store, with all its attendant responsibilities, shows in her large dark eyes.

Athina knows full well that the fortune which will soon be hers, whether she wants it or not, is the subject of a bitter battle between her entrepreneurial French father and the Greek trustees charged with protecting it. Even at this tender age, the pale-faced, somewhat nervous teenager cannot avoid being drawn into the battle for control of her fortune-in-waiting being waged by men who maintain they have only her interests at heart. Thierry Roussel, the man who fathered her and was recklessly unfaithful to her mother, is nothing more than a gold-digger, say the Greybeards, as the four Athens-based trustees of her estate are known. In an attempt to distance themselves from the squalid feud, they have already dragged this pleasant-mannered teenager into the spotlight by declaring: 'The dispute is between him (Roussel) and his daughter.' They disregarded a statement that Athina did not want to have any relationship with the Greek members of the board, reasoning that if she had said this it was probably at her father s prompting.

Although he says that he has instilled in Athina the knowledge that '... (money) is not a gold statue you must venerate', much of Roussel's time is consumed with the battle over the fortune and he predicts that 'one day they (the trustees) will have to account to Athina.' And, in a thinly-veiled reference to his late wife's addiction to mind-altering substances and the sexual malpractice— including hiring lovers— that in her case went with it, he adds 'It is very difficult to be the daughter of a very famous person ... They often finish very badly. They take drugs because they don't have their own personality.'

For both sides, time is running out. In January 2003, Athina will be 18 and free to do what she wants with the fortune that is rightfully hers.

Those who live close to the Roussels (Thierry is married to his beautiful former Swedish mistress Marianne 'Gaby' Landhage and they have three other children— two born while he was still married to Christina), say that Athina's current sweetheart wants nothing more than to farm acres of the hills which roll u