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The lost potential of Max Mosley’s genius son
Jonathan Prynn, Benedict Moore-Bridger and Robert Mendick07.05.09
For all the many achievements to his name, it was, ultimately, a life tragically wasted.
Alexander Mosley died alone, still not 40, surrounded by the paraphernelia of the long-term heroin addict.
Yet it could all have been so different if this brilliant yet flawed academic had fulfilled his potential.
Although he was best known in recent years as the financial backer and co-founder of the fashionable Hereford Road restaurant off Westbourne Grove in west Lon-don, his greatest genius was as a mathematical economist.
Academic friends spoke yesterday of an extraordinary talent that, with application, could have propelled him to the very highest level of the economics profession.
But heroin addiction took hold and Mosley drifted away from the structured academic world that could, perhaps, have given his existence more purpose.
The £1.5million Notting Hill mews house where the restaurateur was found is yards away from where former TV host Paula Yates died of a heroin overdose in 2000.
His distant cousin Olivia Channon — they were both members of the greater Guinness clan — suffered the same fate while an undergraduate at Oxford in 1986.
Alexander was born in 1970 into one of Britain's most notorious aristocratic families. His grand-father was Sir Oswald Mosley, the 6th holder of a Baronetcy founded in 1781, but better known as leader of the British Union of Fascists.
His grandmother was the socialite Diana Mitford, who became a close friend of Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer was a guest at their wedding in 1936. Father Max, who lived under the shadow of his eccentric parents, is president of the motor racing body the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), but is now better known for his taste in sado-masochistic orgies.
Tabloid revelations about Max's sexual adventures are said to have distressed his sensitive eldest son, although there is no immediate suggestion the trauma was linked directly to his death. Ivo Mosley, a cousin of Alexander, told the Standard that the family name had not made life easier for his sensitive and publicity-shunning relative.
“He was a very nice, sweet guy, very clever,” he said. “But it is sometimes not easy having this name. The name can be difficult.
“He was named after his uncle Alexander, who died a few years ago. Max and his brother were very close and that is why Max named his son Alexander.
“It is quite difficult having Oswald as a grandfather. You are born with a kind of inheritance that makes people react to your name first before they react to you as a person.” Alexander was educated at Westminster School and after studying maths at Oxford University he gained a PhD in economics at London University. As Dr Mosley, he went on to work in computer programming for IBM and for management group Andersen Consulting.
Yet in his early 30s the shy but brilliant young man had still not found his niche in life. In 2002 Max asked a family friend, Robert — now Lord Skidelsky, the biographer of John Maynard Keynes — to open doors for Alexander in the economics world. He was introduced to Lord Desai of the London School of Economics.
The 68-year-old Labour peer recalls how the young Alexander Mosley made an immediate impression. He quickly solved a theoretical Gordian knot re-lated to a model of the struggle between workers and capitalists that had been troubling Desai for half his life. Desai said: “He was such a talented bloke, really very, very able.” He remembers Mosley as one of the two or three most naturally gifted mathematicians he encountered in his career,
The outcome of Mosley's work was an academic paper published in 2004 called “A Clarification of the Goodwin Model of the Growth Cycle”.
A co-author of the paper, economist Brian Henry, remembers Mosley as a “very earnest, attractive, likeable individual very keen to do something tremendously useful. He was rather calm and collected and seemed quite well balanced...but the facts point otherwise.”
Troubled family: Alex was said to have been distressed by tabloid revelations about the sexual peccadilloes of his father, motor racing chief Max Mosley
After the work on the Goodwin paper was completed, Mosley went to the LSE to do a Masters degree in economics but quickly dropped out, possibly because of the growing influence on heroin on his behaviour. According to Henry “he had a habit that had started to become a problem. He dropped out of the course at the LSE and I suggested that he went to Birkbeck. I was quite anxious that he worked with us because of his skills.”
Colleagues from that relatively happy time in Alexander's often troubled life were struck by his closeness to his family. There were regular trips skiing with his father. One to Switzerland in 2004 ended in disaster when a gust of wind plucked Alexander from a mountainside. He crashed on to rocks below, breaking his arm in several places.
After dropping out of the LSE, Mosley decided to use his talents and his inherited money to pursue a fresh career as an entrepreneur.
He was a director of Marine Current Turbines, a Bristol based company involved in exploiting tidal currents for power generation. Last year the company's underwater turbine project on Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland was plugged into the National Grid and will eventully power 1,000 homes.
There were also financial interests in the fashion world but his real passion was the Hereford Road restaurant he opened in 2007 with his former schoolmate, chef Tom Pemberton.
Rave reviews and a well-connected west London clientele, including David Cameron and Tom Parker Bowles, quickly followed. Alexander spent a lot of his time at the restaurant greeting and chatting to regular guests. But despite this success, his personal life was sliding inexorably into the chaos and despair that led to his death.
Although there were girlfriends in his life he never settled down with a permanent partner.
One close friend of Alexander's, who would only be named as Will, said he found life's pressures increasingly hard. He told the Standard: “He was trying to get clean, but ended up relapsing.
“He had been battling his smack problem. He properly fought it and there were periods for a few years when he did — not to keep mummy or daddy happy, he really wanted it. He wanted to be drug-free and have a relationship.
“He wanted to be loved and a lot of his problems were around that. He had a terrible depression. I assumed his death was deliberate. He would have known how much you can use, but in this day and age you don't know what you are getting. I assumed he killed himself.”
Will added: “He was incredibly bright. At times I thought he was one of those genius autistic people, because when it came to engaging with people he had problems, but with numbers it was easy. When it came to emotional connections and love he found it incredibly painful and I think that is what it was about.
“This was a guy in a lot of pain. A lot of emotional pain. He did not know where he fitted in. He wanted to go where he belonged. The closest he got was heroin. He was using for 15 years.
“He was a genius who was uncomfortable with himself and the world and tried to make himself at ease. He was a lot more than Max Mosley's son and a lot more than a junkie. They were a small part of his life.”
Reader views (4)
John in Aberdeen: if the State system was up to snuff no 'posh mummies and daddies' (who in fact are mostly extrememly hard working and putting everything they've got into the school fees, rather than just 'posh') would waste money on a private education. Abolishing the private sector will not make the state sector better. Non-posh mummies and daddies could refuse to put up with the standards they are getting if they wanted to. Here in France you all go the local school as they are all about the same quality and it's pretty good, but there's extra help if your child shows talent. Result: a socialist country instead of a quasi-communist one which tries to keep the bright kids down because it's seen as unfair for them to have an advantage, and which gives everyone a uniformly rubbish education.
As for Alexander Mosely: he solved problems the pros had difficulties with so was clearly very talented - it's rather churlish, especially as he's just died - simply to diss him out of pique at his class status. If someone is talented, firstly there needs to be a system to spot their talent and then they need to have it developed all the way - irrespective of their background, for the benefit of Society. Possibly I'm violently agreeing with you, but it seems to me your method of getting there is flawed.
- Roz, France
What was that again? "He could have been a contender!" And the usual response, "So could anyone!" We will never know what kids can or can't do until someone takes every posh kid out of private schools and puts them into the local dumping ground school and takes the same number of those dumping ground pupils from age five all the way through to sixteen and see what happens. This experiment should be tried now. Better to waste 5% of our talent by screwing some of them up than waste 80% of our talent as we do now. Posh mummies and daddies won't accept the crap from "teachers" that we poor saps have to. If you want to make the world a better place there is a simple way, ..... just do it.
- John, Aberdeen, UK
Condolences to the Moseley family and friends of Alexander.
- Escobar-Alop-Lop, Camden County
What a very sad and wasted life. Condolences to his family and friends.
- S-M Hearmon, London, UK
