[citation needed] Publisher Rupert Hart-Davis was a client when Goodman was a partner in Rubenstein Nash; Goodman reached an agreement with Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook over G. M. Young's life of Stanley Baldwin in 1952, though it required the "hideously expensive" job of removing and replacing seven leaves with revised wording in 7,580 copies of the book.

After hearing details of the firm's finances for ten or fifteen minutes Goodman dictated everything back to his secretary: "the most amazing feat of mental agility I've ever seen or heard of".

Portman commenced legal proceedings for recovery but the claim was never substantiated, and the research of Goodman's biographer concluded that it had no substance.

[12] Goodman was often portrayed by Private Eye as a sinister "power behind the throne" exerting huge influence on the British establishment.

[13] Official MI5 records declassified on 22 October 2015 revealed that the association between the bisexual Boothby and the Kray twins had been the subject of an MI5 investigation in 1964.