So bitter and relentless is the assault on Murdoch that the case against him is no longer pursued with any semblance of reason. Take the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone. It was the Guardian's front page allegation on July 5, 2011, that the News of the World had "deleted the missing schoolgirl's voicemails, giving the family false hope" which ignited the controversy, disgusted the public and led directly to the Leveson inquiry. After a statement from the Metropolitan Police last December, the Guardian published a correction which stated: "The News of the World was not responsible for the deletion of voicemails which caused Milly Dowler's parents to have false hope that she was still alive."

Quite a turnaround, though it should be said that the News of the World did apparently hack into Milly Dowler's mobile phone a few days later, which was obviously indefensible, but without deleting any voicemails. How do Watson and Hickman deal with this important matter? They repeat the original allegation of deletion at some length before briefly mentioning the Guardian's correction and then referring the readers to Chapter 23, which doesn't exist in my version of the book. In a strange way the original allegation is allowed to stand, or at any rate has not been explicitly demolished. Nick Davies, the co-author of the July 5 piece, and in many ways a heroic figure, has also been unable to admit in plain terms that this aspect of the story was simply wrong.

What happens to Murdoch now is obviously a matter of speculation. Let us make the possibly dangerous assumption that the worst of the News of the World revelations are already in the public domain. Will he survive? A few days after the Labour MPs on the Culture Committee declared that he was unfit to run an international company, the board of News Corp begged to disagree, and declared its full confidence in him. I don't suppose that means very much, particularly as the current board is stuffed with his allies. There is the threat of litigation in America. Murdoch's standing there will not be enhanced if charges recently brought against Rebekah Brooks, his former favourite and James's number two, are upheld.

Sun King or not, he must have been battered by the events of the last ten months, and affected by the vitriol unleashed against him.  Even without the News of the World scandal, it would have been rash to predict that News Corp would hang on to his British newspapers after his demise. As he said at the Leveson inquiry, the shareholders don't like them.

After all that has happened, there must be a high chance that he will be forced to dispose of some or all of them even while he remains in charge. There are rumours of buyers lining up. One way or another, the era of Rupert Murdoch as a newspaperman in Britain — though perhaps not as the controlling shareholder of BSkyB — is drawing to a close.