The Power of Paper: A History, a Financial Adventure, and a Warning
By Christopher Ondaatje
HarperCollins £19.95, 237 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.95

On one level, this is the story of an extraordinary financial buccaneer. At the age of 16, the Sri Lankan-born Christopher Ondaatje was summoned by the headmaster of Blundell’s, the West Country public school he was attending, to be told that the money had run out and that he had to leave.