Lucky John : from tea boy to chairman of a multi-billion pound firm

From the humblest beginnings, John Brown became the dominant figure in British bookmaking as Chairman of William Hill.

Brought up in the East End, and still sounding like an East End barrow boy, Brown's doughty, ambitious character and sharp intellect took him from tea boy to tycoon.While he schoolmates were taking their exams, Brown was flat on his back in an isolation hospital with rheumatic fever.

Armed with nothing more than a determination to be a bookmaker, he wrote to William Hill and started as a tea boy.This title traces Brwon's increasingly public rise from the bottom to the slippery top, and the multi-million pound reward that came with William Hill's eventual stock market flotation.

A man of strong opinions, strongly expressed, John Brown gives his views on the organizations and individuals he has encountered and on the the management of British business.