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A Different Sort of Tory subscriber-only content

Ronald Stevens

  • Editor: An Inside Story of Newspapers by Max Hastings

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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Ronald Stevens was an industrial correspondent on the Daily Telegraph in the 1960s and, until 2002, managing editor of the British Journalism Review.

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