David Butterfield

Why The Spectator is a true survivor

As print titles battle logistical disruption and falling sales from Covid-19, it’s worth saluting The Spectator’s long-lasting tenacity. It has appeared without fail now for 192 years, week in, week out. Its publication has continued through both world wars, numerous strikes and protests, power cuts, cholera outbreaks and terrorist attacks. Today, even as the country has gone into lockdown, it has maintained its rhythm, with staff compiling issues from their studies and kitchen tables. And next week, on St George’s Day, The Spectator will turn out its 10,000th issue, a benchmark reached by no other magazine in history.

The path has not always been easy. At the outbreak of the second world war, The Spectator’s skeleton staff were prudently moved from its Gower Street offices in London to Harmondsworth in Middlesex. But after a few days the measure proved too frustrating, and the team returned to Bloomsbury. As it happened, the Gower Street premises emerged relatively unscathed from the war, although the basement was set on fire by an incendiary bomb during the Blitz. Had the team been out of town, the fire would have spread and the whole office would have gone up in flames. Soon after, St Clement’s Press, the paper’s printers, was bombed, but the shell failed to explode and the magazine appeared that week like any other.

Throughout WWII, The Spectator was scaled down in size by governmental restrictions. The editor, Wilson Harris, chose to lower the quality and weight of paper in order to maximise the content of the magazine. He was frank with his readers about the troubles he and his staff faced:

‘In the course of Monday night the editor, with no worse than shattered windows, had to evacuate his flat owing to the presence of unexploded bombs, the assistant-editor (fortunately unhurt) had his house half wrecked, another member of the staff, with the whole neighbourhood evacuated owing to time-bombs, could not arrive at all.

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