John Francis (Jack) Williams was one of the most successful of the media barons who helped shape Australia in the twentieth century. In six short years, Jack expanded the reach of the Melbourne-based The Herald and Weekly Times (The HWT) across most of Australia. After Jack's death, Rupert Murdoch was to benefit considerably from this early success of The HWT group in constructing his own global media empire.

In this short biography of Jack Williams, his son, John Irven Williams, traces the factors which led to Jack's phenomenal success, as well as to his virtual disappearance from Australia's media history until very recently. The seeds of both lay in Jack's personality and his dysfunctional early life.

John Williams worked for several decades as a journalist in Australia, south-east Asia and Europe. Later he became a director for UNICEF in New York, Geneva and Sydney. He and his wife Mehr live in New York.