'Howard Hughes was one of the strangest and most significant figures of the twentieth century: aviator, film mogul, serial womaniser, billionaire, political meddler, drug addict, recluse. His obsessive-compulsive disorder would end up crippling and isolating him; in the end he self-medicated his way into oblivion.

'In the last years of Hughes' life, feeling his power ebb, bedridden and hopelessly addicted to drugs, he lays out and lays bare his history. He loops and reloops the past on a seemingly endless reel in his head as he spirals into madness and disconnection. In stops and starts, his life unfolds and gradually we see the shape and preoccupations of the twentieth century emerging from his ruined psyche - a world of oil, money, planes, flight, movies, drugs, sex, neurosis, fear - a world where paranoia reigns.' (Publisher's blurb)