Fleet Street

Thursday

Harriet Cullen

How my family loved – and lost – the Telegraph

As the Telegraph moves slowly towards Arab ownership – 15 per cent to start, and who knows what in the future – I must declare my interest. I’m a Berry, the daughter of Michael Berry, who founded the Sunday Telegraph and became Lord Hartwell, and granddaughter of William Berry from south Wales, who bought the Daily Telegraph in 1928 and became Lord Camrose. They owned and ran it, hands on, for a big part of the 20th century – 58 years. My mother, Pamela Berry, daughter of F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, was the political hostess who wielded the Telegraph soft power. My brother Adrian Berry was the paper’s science correspondent

Monday

Ruth Bloomfield

Farewell to the Fleet Street I loved

Filthy, foetid and fraught with danger. A magnet for hooligans, hard drinkers, a few saints and plenty of sinners. And that was Fleet Street before the newspapers moved in. This ancient thoroughfare, in use since Roman times, is one of London’s most famous occupational streets, much as Jermyn Street is known for its tailors and Harley Street its medics. The difference is that Fleet Street is inexorably linked to newspapers despite the fact journalists have not pounded its pavements for decades, the trade having moved on to Wapping and beyond at the tail end of the last century. Now Fleet Street is on the cusp of another new era, with plans to replace many of its historic buildings with modern office blocks. According to

Wednesday

Suzi Feay

An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed

Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the day, it took hours of fossicking in far-flung dusty bookshops to feed your hunger. Oh, the joys of hunting down a shabby collection of Arthur Machen weirdiana! Now a few keystrokes will do the job. The magic has been lost. Magic is Alan Moore’s business, and he’s also a Machen devotee. The graphic novelist is well known for issuing his illustrators with exceptionally detailed written instructions for series such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell, which perhaps accounts for the throbbing prose style of this fantasy novel.