Book review: Barefaced Messiah: The True Story of L Ron Hubbard - Russell Miller

That LRH was a con-man who became rich based on a sci-fi religion he extemporised out of whole cloth is common knowledge. That he was grandiose, paranoid, and vindictive is also well attested, not least in the character of the church that he founded. What struck me reading this book was that the vast wealth he accrued in middle age precipitated a complete mental breakdown. Money and power, far from making him happy, enabled him to live out a fantasy of persecution and misery in total seclusion from the real world. Essentially he lived his later years in a succession of luxury prisons of his own devising. He died alienated, fearful, and alone. I never expected to feel sorry for L Ron Hubbard.