An unfortunately timely book, this is published shortly after the death of its subject. What's most interesting is the extent to which the "Mr Swatch" of the title was a character of Hayek's own making, a myth he forcefully repeated until it was taken as fact. In this myth there was little space for his Lebanese origins, for example.

Wegelin at least pursues some of the truth beyond the legend. There's a lovely story from Hayek's childhood, which foretells some of this tendency for self-mythology. Asked to speak to his class, a little Hayek stood up and said: "I am Peter the Great, and I am a Lion."

The book covers in detail the story of how Hayek built a small engineering consultancy before taking control of a large part of the Swiss watch industry at a time of crisis. Two strands of the myth are that he single-handedly saved the watch industry and was responsible for bringing Swatch to the world. Wegelin shows that plenty of others were involved.

This book puts into context Hayek's extraordinary feats. That it does so by bursting one or two of the more outrageous aspects of his self-mythology is definitely a good thing.