|
Their finest hour: Wendi Deng (in pink) jumps to her feet as a protester throws a plate of foam at Rupert Murdoch during his evidence to a parliamentary select committee on the phone-hacking scandal. When Rupert Murdoch in 1998 announced his abrupt separation from Anna Murdoch, his wife of 31 years, almost nobody at the time, including Anna, had any idea, or could reasonably speculate, that Murdoch, then an old 67, might have a girlfriend. But he did. And his divorce and remarriage, and the effect it had on his children, social life and executives, would shape the next generation of his company – a romance for our time, as it were. With the curt, and blistering, announcement of his decision to file for divorce from Wendi Murdoch, the young woman he met when she was 28 and working for Star TV, his company in Hong Kong, another upheaval begins. It was two summers ago that Wendi burst into the news and transformed her public self from harridan to heroine by, with lightening fast reflexes, blocking a pie attack on her frail-looking husband in the midst of a difficult testimony in Britain before a committee of parliament investigating the hacking scandal. This was to many people in the wider Rupert-Wendi orbit an unexpected turnaround. The informed gossip, always pretty granular in detail, had put them on the outs for sometime. She hadn't even diverted from a promotional tour for a movie she'd produced – until the last minute – to be in London with her up-against-it husband. | 
