Stephen Glover

The Times it is a-changin’

Because the Times is, or was, a newspaper like no other, it has enjoyed the distinction of successive volumes of official history. The last, written by John Grigg, covered the years 1966 to 1981, when the Times was bought by Rupert Murdoch. Volume seven, entitled ‘The Murdoch Years’, takes us up almost to the present day.

Graham Stewart, a historian of the 1930s, should be congratulated on agreeing to undertake the task. For although earlier chroniclers have had to deal with controversial or painful passages in the newspaper’s history, such as its prewar embrace of appeasement or its postwar emollience towards the Soviet Union, none has been asked to wade into so perilous a minefield as was faced by Stewart. No one could deny that Murdoch raises many hackles across the political spectrum; or that the Times has changed more in the period covered by this volume than in any previous era.

In some respects Stewart does a decent job. Though employed by the Times as its official historian, he gives the appearance of striving for objectivity and fairness, as though wanting to serve the newspaper’s ancestral voices rather than its existing proprietor and management. The blow-by-blow account he offers will be too detailed for many, but it is thorough and, on the whole, just. He gives mixed reviews of the editorship of Harold Evans, sacked by Murdoch after only a year. His successor, Charlie Douglas-Home, editor for the next three years, gets a good write-up, as does Charlie ‘Gorbals’ Wilson, editor from 1985 until 1990. Simon Jenkins, who ran the paper for the next two years, is judged not to have wholly succeeded in seeing off the Independent, which he had said he would. It is only when Stewart tackles the ten-year editorship of Peter Stothard that he reaches for a pair of rose-coloured glasses.

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