The Rich Man (ePub)

How does a charming Scotsman educated at Edinburgh University go from being an officer and gentleman in his majesty's forces in Gallipoli - to masquerading as a Dutch doctor in the French Foreign Legion, consorting and working with bootleggers and racketeers in Chicago, being pursued by the FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol on various charges including embezzelment, fraud, smuggling, currency rackets and bigamy, and wooing and deceiving women around the globe as he tries to stay one step ahead of the authorities? His deeds created newspaper headlines around the world in the early fifties but his two young children remained blissfully unaware of all of this until well into their adult years when some of the story started to emerge for them. Their mother had always maintained that Norman Morton-Stewart was an urbane charismatic wealthy gentleman with a noble history and friends in high places. Part of that was true, but they never knew he was born James Edward Morton and at various times had been a Dr Van Dian, Horace Albert Hall, James Norman Stewart and Ian Stewart. During his life he filled many roles including soldier, doctor, banker, pharmacist, accountant, salesman, engineer, travel agency manager and prison inmate. This is the story of a son's journey attempting to pull the astonishing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together and make sense of it all. Charles Stewart is a journalist who began his career in newspapers at the West Australian in 1969. He moved into television reporting in the 1970's, working in commercial news programs and current affairs with A Current Affair and the Today Show, before becoming a sports journalist with the Nine Network's Wide World of Sports and Sports Sunday in 1988. He has reported on events in the United States, Canada, England, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. These days, he works as a freelance producer, mainly making documentaries and occasionally dipping his toes back into the world of television, most recently as the producer of the SBS program, Nerds FC.