It was the long holiday that first raised eyebrows. Rupert Murdoch, for so long someone who rarely spent more than a week at a time away from the coal face of his global media businesses, News Corp and Fox Corporation, was on board a yacht once owned by magnate Aristotle Onassis.

To charter the 99-metre-long vessel Christina O costs about $1.2 million a week, plus expenses, but in mid-July, most of the Murdoch family were spotted on board off the coast of Positano, Italy.