Fleet Street

overview

This page points to some studies about the press in the UK and particular media groups.

It covers -

introductions
corporate histories
the religious press
the Berrys
reference

introductions

Jeremy Tunstall's Newspaper Power: the New National Press in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon 1996) and Newspaper Money: Fleet Street & the Search for the Affluent Reader (London: Hutchinson 1975) by Fred Hirsch & David Gordon should be read in conjunction with Anthony Smith's incisive Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980's (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1980).

Charles Wintour's The Rise & Fall of Fleet Street (London: Hutchinson 1989), Northcliffe's Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press 1896-1996 (New York: St Martins 2000), edited by Peter Catterall & Colin Seymour-Ure, Power Without Responsibility: The Press & Broadcasting in Britain (London: Routledge 1997) by James Curran & Jean Seaton and The Market For Glory (London: Faber 1986) by Simon Jenkins offer perspectives on 'old media' in the UK.

The outstanding work on the 'political press' at the turn of last century is Stephen Koss's two volume The Rise & Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London: Hamish Hamilton 1984). The emergence of mass market publications is explored in Papers for the Millions: the New Journalism in Britain, 1850s to 1914 (New York: Greenwood 1988) edited by Joel Wiener.

It is complemented by narrower studies such as Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks, 1932-1940 (London: RHS ) edited by N.J. Crowson and An Appeasement Diary: A.L. Kennedy and The Times (London: RHS 2001) edited by Gordon Martel.

For Fleet Street as a circus, with varying degrees of indignation, see The Good, the Bad and the Unacceptable: the Hard News about the British Press (London: Faber 1993) by Raymond Snoddy, Tickle the Public: One Hundred Years of the Popular Press (London: Gollancz 1996) by Matthew Engel and Selling Hitler (London: Faber 1987) by Andrew Harris.

Graham Cleverley's The Fleet Street Disaster (London: Constable 1976) has proved durable; studies in the Murdoch profile on this site highlight managerial and union problems before the move out of the Street.

corporate histories

David Ayerst's The Manchester Guardian: Biography of A Newspaper (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1971) is essential reading. It has been updated by the thinner Changing Faces: A History of the Guardian (London: Fourth Estate 1993) by Geoffrey Taylor.

The Political Diaries of CP Scott 1911-1928 (London: Collins 1970) edited by Trevor Wilson is a fascinating account from Charles Prestwich Scott, Manchester Guardian editor for 58 years and one of the fathers of what Noel Annan characterised as 'Our Age'.

A detailed profile of the Guardian and the Observer is here.

Other histories of UK newspapers include The Pearl of Days: An Intimate Memoir of The Sunday Times 1822-1972 (London: Hamish Hamilton 1972) by Harold Hobson, Phillip Knightley & Leonard Russell is far more sprightly. For your next wait in FlightDeck we recommend Knightley's memoir A Hack's Progress (London: Cape 1997) - modest, humane, intelligent.

Richard Cockett's David Astor & the Observer (London: Deutsch 1991) is a study of the UK 'quality' rag sliding to oblivion between the Times and the Guardian.

For studies of Murdoch, Northcliffe, the Rothermeres, Maxwell, Pearson, the Astors, Trinity, Iliffes and United News & Media see the separate profiles on this site.

     the religious press

Parochial publishing in the UK has not enjoyed the power of France's Bayard. Josef Altholz' The Religious Press in Britain 1760-1900 (New York: Greenwood 1989), Michael Walsh's intelligent The Tablet - A Commemorative History (London: The Tablet 1990) and Bernard Palmer's Gadfly for God: a History of the Church Times (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1991) offer a point of reference.

     the Berrys

William and Gomer Berry (enobled as Viscount Camrose and Lord Kemsley) built groups that at various times included the Times (now with Murdoch), the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph (acquired by Conrad Black's Hollinger in 1986 after a botched move out of Fleet Street), the Financial Times, the Graphic, the Daily Dispatch, the Daily Sketch, the Manchester Evening Chronicle and the Sunday Chronicle. At the peak of their influence they controlled over two national and six provincial morning papers, eight provincial evening papers, eight provincial weeklies and about seventy periodicals.

Dennis Hamilton's Editor-in-Chief: Fleet Street Memoirs (London: Hamish Hamilton 1989) offers an insider's account of management failure as the cause for sale of the Kemsley part of the empire to Roy Thomson. Duff Hart-Davis' The House The Berrys Built (London: Hutchinson 1957) and William Camrose: Giant of Fleet Street (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1992) by Michael Berry (Lord Hartwell) are more reverential. Gordon Allan's Fleet Street Round the Clock (London: Alpha 1997) and A Short Walk Down Fleet Street (London: Alpha 1999) offers a journalist's-eye view.

     reference

Dennis Griffiths's The encyclopedia of the British press 1422-1992 (London: Macmillan 1992) is invaluable, as are two works by David Linton & Richard Boston - The Newspaper Press in Britain: an Annotated Bibliography (London: Mansell 1987) and Twentieth century Newspaper Press in Britain: an Annotated Bibliography (London: Mansell 1994).

next page (UK newspaper chronology)