Out from the shadows
It wasn’t the greatest start in life, being born in Britain during World War II with the surname Mosley.
As a child of Sir Oswald Mosley and Diana, Lady Mosley – two of the country’s most reviled fascists – Max Mosley was never able to fulfil his political ambitions later in life. But he didn’t let his background stop him wielding power in other fields.
He became one of the most powerful men in motorsport, lauded for his mission to improve safety not only on the track but also on the road. He was also credited with helping tighten the UK’s privacy laws, thanks to his own experience of making salacious tabloid headlines.
Mosley, who died last month aged 81, was a man of contradictions as well as many achievements. He garnered both respect and loathing and was often described as charming and intimidating in the same breath.
BBC chief Formula One correspondent Andrew Benson’s obituary described Mosley as having a “brilliant intellect and a devious, sometimes malicious mind” and suggested he would have been better suited to a career in politics.
In fact, Mosley had tried to become a Conservative Party candidate in the early 1980s, but found his surname counted against him. The war might have ended nearly four decades before, but his parents’ actions had not faded from people’s memories.
His father, a baronet, was a Conservative MP who switched to Labour. Eventually, in a complete about-face, he founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932. His extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views aligned with those being expressed in Germany and Italy, and he set up a corps
