Vol. 24 No. 24 · 12 December 2002
pages 16-17 | 3316 words

A Different Sort of Tory
Ronald Stevens
- Editor: An Inside Story of Newspapers by Max Hastings
Macmillan, 398 pp, £20.00, October 2002, ISBN 0 333 90837 6
Something about the British press attracts Canadians. In the 1920s Max Aitken bought the Daily and Sunday Express, turned them into successful popular papers and became Lord Beaverbrook in the process. In the 1950s Roy Thomson bought Kemsley Newspapers, added the Times to his empire in 1966, and was similarly rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords. Conrad Black came on the scene in the spring of 1985, paid £10 million for a minority stake in the Telegraph Group, and later the same year became its controlling shareholder for the modest expenditure of another £20 million. He, too, has acquired a peerage, to the great displeasure of the Canadian Government.
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Letters
Vol. 25 No. 1 · 2 January 2003
From Rex Winsbury
I was an industrial reporter on the Daily Telegraph under Ronald Stevens (LRB, 12 December 2002). Lord Hartwell (or 'Mr Michael' as he was known) insisted that we publish the monthly coal stock figures, long after any possibility of a national coal crisis had passed. One day the phone rang and the news editor told me I was required on the sixth floor. There I found a special reception desk (to ward off visitors rather than welcome them) and was shown into an anteroom. Double doors opened and the smallest man I had ever seen, immaculate in frock coat and stiff collar, appeared. He was Mr Michael's butler. 'Mr Michael wants to know whether the coal stock figures include imports.' I started towards the double doors, thinking that I should explain in person. But the small man barred my way. 'I shall convey your response.' 'No,' I said. He vanished back through the double doors, then reappeared. 'That is all.' So I left, and never did meet (or even see) Lord Hartwell. But not long afterwards, Ronald Stevens, mercifully and rightly, fired me.
Rex Winsbury
London WC1