The History of the Times (ePub)

In 1980, The Times was one of the world's most famous newspapers. It was also in chaos. Losing millions of pounds a year and repeatedly crippled by industrial action, it had been off the streets for eleven months between 1979 and 1980, when its owners finally decided to cut their losses. When Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun and News of the World, heard that The Times was being put up for sale, he commented laconically, "I doubt whether there will be any buyers."

Months later, it was Murdoch, one of the most controversial media moguls of the age, who won control of the paper in a contentious sale that many feared would see a treasured national institution rescued by a tabloid owner intent on traducing the values that had made it great. Starting with that historic moment, this is the frank and absorbing history of the power struggles, triumphs and gaffes that shaped Murdoch's Times in the closing decades of an extraordinary century. Behind the venerable façade the paper presented to the outside world, Graham Stewart reveals an institution as divided, uncertain and varied as the news events it covered. It is the story of the editors who - with differing degrees of success - sought to steer the paper with wit, intelligence, integrity and, sometimes, intimidation. It is also the tale of the journalists who have reported, analysed and interpreted the news to a reading public as often outraged as it was approving.

From the Falklands War to the Ashcroft affair; the Wapping Dispute that decisively smashed the power of the trades unions to the court cases that helped reshape British libel law; through Thatcher, Major and Blair, this is an erudite and entertaining look at the inner workings of a world-renowned paper. It provides a fascinating lens through which to review the close of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first.

Graham Stewart is the author of the internationally acclaimed Burying Caesar and the forthcoming Friendship and Betrayal. He worked as historical researcher to the late Alan Clark before taking up his current role as historian of The Times newspaper.