biography
| name: |
Goldsmith, Sir James (Michael)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1933–97)
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| biography:
| Businessman, publisher, and politician, born in Paris, France. His family left France at the beginning of World War 2, and he was educated in the UK, where after leaving school he built up a range of companies and developed a reputation as a charismatic, risk-taking financier. He lived both in France and the UK, and received a great deal of media attention for his flamboyant public and private lives, to which he responded aggressively, notably in the libel suit against Private Eye in the 1970s. In the 1980s he worked chiefly in the USA, then developed environmental and political interests, and was elected a member of the European Parliament for France (1995–7). He was knighted in 1976, and became a controversial figure in the UK when he financed the Referendum Party in the 1997 general election - a campaign he forcefully promoted while suffering from the pancreatic cancer from which he died two months later. |
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