John Asprey News Today

A gold pocket watch said to have been made for J.P. Morgan disappeared, prompting a hunt that plunged into the baroque world of high-end antiquities.

LONDON: Eccentric publisher Naim Attallah passed away last week at the age of 89 after contracting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), but the Palestinian-British man’s legacy — which includes his glamorous lifestyle — will outlive him for generations to come. Attallah was born in 1931 to a Catholic family in Haifa, which was a part of Palestine at the time. In 1949, when he was 18 years old, his parents sent him to the UK to complete an engineering degree at the Battersea Polytechnic in ...

Last modified on Thu 11 Feb 2021 15.15 EST The life of Naim Attallah, who has died aged 89, might have come from the pages of Balzac: he went from currency dealer to company director, racehorse-owner, film and theatre impresario, publisher, magazine proprietor, parfumier, chocolate-maker and – perhaps most importantly and controversially – author. In the early 1970s, he fell in with John Asprey, heir to the luxury goods group, and under his patronage became joint managing director and event...