Alexander Chancellor, CBE

Warm congratulations to Alexander Chancellor, who has received an CBE today for services to journalism. (Congratulations, too, to regular Spectator contributor Susan Hill, who has received a CBE for her services to literature.) Chief among those services was creating the modern Spectator. As he put it, ‘The Spectator is more of a cocktail party than a political party.’ It would recruit brilliant writers, and give them freedom to write whatever they wanted without having an editorial line imposed on them. The Economist is a brilliant magazine, but it uses a homogenized writing style throughout. The Spectator, Chancellor argued, should be the home for all manner of writers, with all manner of writing styles and interests. They should conform to only three criteria: clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion. His formula transformed The Spectator, and the main job of his successors has been to protect and project this voice. Thanks to digital platforms such as Kindle and the iPad, the Chancellor formula is now reaching a sizeable overseas audience. 

I was thrilled to be able to lure Alexander back to The Spectator as a columnist recently and his Long Life column has become an instant hit with readers. It feels like he has been in the magazine forever – which is understandable because The Spectator still is, in almost all critical respects, the magazine that he created.

A brief history of The Spectator – and Alexander’s role in it – can be found on our new Facebook timeline.