Hacked off: Rise and fall of the once queen of Fleet Street

In the midst of his company’s hacking scandal, Rupert Murdoch headed to his London apartment and emerged with the News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks on his arm. Asked by a reporter about his priorities, Murdoch answered: “This one,” gesturing with his thumb to Brooks.

Yesterday marked the opening day of Brooks’s trial on charges of phone hacking, bribing public officials, and concealing computers and documents from police. She will be alongside former colleagues, including Prime Minister David Cameron’s former press officer Andy Coulson and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire. Brooks faces criminal charges for perversion of the course of justice, along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, her former secretary, and the former security chief for News International. She, like her co-defendants, denies all charges.

Brooks, editor of Murdoch’s News of the World, then The Sun, always presented something of an enigma for those who followed her meteoric rise. In her Who’s Who entry, she was said to have studied at the Sorbonne. (The Daily Mail reported she had only taken a short course there.) She materialised at the News of the World as a secretary and features writer. Little more than 11 years later she was, at 32, the youngest-ever editor-in-chief of the News of the World or of any other national newspaper.