Athina: The Last Onassis

BY way of light relief as Greece comes face-to-face with financial meltdown, it’s worth visiting the story of Athina Onassis Roussel, who became the richest little girl in the world when she inherited unimaginable wealth from her heiress mother, Christina Onassis. This compelling book explores the legend of Athina’s grandfather, the shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, and examines the legacy that became Athina’s extraordinary birthright as The Last Onassis. No 20th-century sage features more great names than that of the Onassis dynasty; the Kennedys – including JFK and his widow Jacqueline, who became Onassis’s second wife – the opera diva Maria Callas who longed to be the third; and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, with whom he fought a celebrated feud for control of Monte Carlo. The cast list is endless: the Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo, the politicians Sir Winston Churchill and Richard Nixon, the tycoons Stavros Niarchos and Howard Hughes and the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Authors Chris Hutchins and Peter Thompson travelled the world to interview key witnesses. No book has ever penetrated so deeply into the secret world of the Onassis dynasty or looked more closely at the lives of Athina’s father, Thierry Roussel. An amazing story for incredible times.