The Greatest Man to Walk Fleet Street: New Biography of Daily Mail Founder Lord Northcliffe

A century after the death of British journalism’s “greatest journalist”, the media world gathered this week to hear eminent biographer Andrew Roberts describe the extraordinary life and achievements of Lord Northcliffe, the founder of the Daily Mail.

‘Great men are seldom good men,’ declared the historian, recently ennobled as Lord Roberts of Belgravia, reflecting on a ‘genius’ who was revered and condemned by friend and foe alike.

What was never disputed, however, was that the mercurial Alfred Harmsworth, who later became Baron and Viscount Northcliffe, known to all as ‘The Boss’, shaped modern media like no one else, and continues to do so to this day. the present day.

Lord Roberts’ new biography of Northcliffe, The Chief, is based on a unique access to the Harmsworth family archive. He has been widely acclaimed for his uncompromising portrayal of the complex and controversial character who invented popular journalism. Northcliffe not only created newspaper giants like the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, but he rescued many more, including The Times and The Observer, and, above all, he clung to his own maxim: “There is great art in feeling “. the pulse of the people

This week, the award-winning historian was invited to celebrate the publication of his book with a special centenary lecture at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London, hosted by Viscount and Viscountess Rothermere on behalf of the Harmsworth family.

After Northcliffe’s death in 1922, his business empire passed into the hands of his brother, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and other members of the family, in whose hands it remains today.

Introducing the lecture, 4th Viscount Rothermere, Chairman of the Daily Mail, explained how Northcliffe’s legacy lives on: ‘He has been an inspiration to journalists for over a century. It remains the soul of our newspaper to this day.’

It was at the Royal Geographical Society that Lord Northcliffe launched an Anglo-American bid to claim the North Pole in 1894 (which failed, though it ended with a 43-square-mile patch of ice named ‘Alfred Island’ after him).

As guests heard, this was just one of the many campaigns the ruthless Northcliffe launched over the course of his long career at the helm of the world’s most successful media empire.

Northcliffe’s appetite for reform and innovation, on behalf of his readers, ranged from mandatory rear-view mirrors and pasteurized milk to hat design and motorized fire engines.

His passion for technology led directly to the first cross-Channel and Atlantic flights.

It would also shape world history. Because, as Lord Roberts acknowledged: ‘This was the man who directed much of the conduct of the First World War with ideas that would also be used in the Second World War.’

Alfred was born into poverty in 1865, the eldest of Alfred and Geraldine Harmsworth’s 14 children (11 of whom would live to adulthood). In 1867 the family moved from Dublin to London, where Alfred senior graduated as a barrister.

Having fathered, at 16, an illegitimate son by the family maid, young Alfred became a freelance journalist, quickly developing a knack for what readers wanted, as opposed to what publishers thought they should be. give.

Victorian education reforms and increasing social mobility had created literate, job-seeking, lower-middle-class readers who did not enjoy the heavy news coverage in the traditional press. Alfred Harmsworth had an intuitive idea of ​​what they would prefer and gave it to them at half price.

After carving out a niche as an innovative editor for Bicycling News (he loved to ride a bike), Harmsworth created a magazine called Answers to Correspondents, packed with stories under headlines like ‘How to Cure Freckles’ or ‘What the Queen Eats’.

It was a great success and led to similar magazines, along with the early acquisition of a newspaper, the Evening News. Harmsworth’s obsessive and competitive attention to detail and his appetite for hard work turned the paper around, with a 500 percent increase in readership.

Soon, he was wealthy enough to buy his doting mother a mini-manor house in north London, as well as a country house for himself in Kent (where he kept a pet alligator in the conservatory).

He married Mary, the sister of a childhood friend, but there would be no children from the marriage.

In 1896, he founded the Daily Mail, having chosen the name, in part, because the newspaper boys found it easy to shout it.

Now that he had been joined by his brother, Harold (the future Lord Rothermere), he had scored an instant hit.

Like all of Northcliffe’s publications, it catered to popular tastes with shocking news, what he called ‘surprises’, and it was also the first newspaper with a page aimed specifically at women.

But he was never rude. As Lord Roberts observed: ‘Northcliffe would never allow words like ‘rupture’ or ‘constipation’ in his newspaper because his mother wouldn’t like it.’

The Mail soon became the world’s best-selling newspaper, with more than a million copies sold daily. He was fiercely independent, but espoused a conservative, unionist, and imperialist vision of the world.

Any sensible politician wanted to be in it, even if the Conservative Prime Minister, the Marquess of Salisbury, sneered that it was ‘written by shopkeepers for shopkeepers’. However, there were far more shop boys than marquises in late Victorian Britain, and they had a thirst for knowledge.

Indeed, as Lord Roberts pointed out, Northcliffe’s acceptance at the highest levels of society (he was soon introduced to Queen Victoria) reflected the social fluidity of Victorian Britain.

In 1905, as one of the most powerful men in the country, Harmsworth was granted a peerage, and at 40, he was the youngest member of the House of Lords.

It was said that he chose the name ‘Northcliffe’ because he wanted a title that began with the same letter as his great hero, Napoleon.

He was a serial innovator, not just in his development of new printing methods. He loved fast cars and was a fervent believer in aviation, driving technical advances by offering huge financial prizes for increasingly ambitious air races.

However, it was not only due to the love of engines. He befriended the Wright brothers and saw the first prototypes of it take off.

He could see war on the horizon and the need for Britain to have aerial firepower.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 underscored the extent of Northcliffe’s power and influence. As Britain’s war prospects faded, he became convinced that Herbert Asquith was not the man for the job of Prime Minister, and he said so.

His withering criticisms of the enormously popular Secretary for War, Lord Kitchener, required great strength of character.

However, Northcliffe insisted that the soldiers in the trenches were being betrayed by a lack of suitable artillery ammunition. Back in Britain, he was charged with sedition and the Mail was burned on the floor of the Stock Exchange.

But Northcliffe stood his ground and would eventually be proven right. He helped bring down the disastrous Dardanelles campaign and pushed for conscription as the decisive way to end the war.

Other demands, such as the use of convoys and a smaller war cabinet, would become military orthodoxy. The new Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, duly sent Northcliffe to the US to raise aid for the UK. Upon his return, he headed the propaganda ministry in enemy countries.

The loss of four nephews in the war would feed him a lasting hatred of Germany.

However, his health was failing. In 1921, she embarked on a world tour and contracted malignant endocarditis that cost her her sanity and ultimately her life. At his funeral in August 1922, more than 7,000 people, many of them war veterans, lined the streets to pay their respects.

His many critics would deplore his unwavering adoration for the British Empire, his ramshackle private life, and his anti-Semitism. However, no one could deny her achievements.

Even the defeated Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who hated him “with intense bitterness”, lamented that “if we had had Northcliffe we ​​would have won the [First World] War’.

The Guardian, never a great fan, observed: “As a material force, there has been nothing in journalism to compare it to.”

Northcliffe’s old rival, Lord Beaverbrook, recognized him as “the greatest figure that ever walked Fleet Street”.

In closing, Lord Roberts reminded the current custodians of ‘Fleet Street’ that, for all Northcliffe’s faults, ‘he showed tremendous moral courage. He was a great man.’