The Spectator
at 175
Alexander Chancellor
How time flies. It seems to me no time at all since The Spectator celebrated its 150th anniversary with a special issue of the magazine and a ball at the Lyceum Theatre. But that was a quarter of a century ago, and The Spectator is now 175 years old and marking the event this week with another party and another special issue.
At the time of our last big birthday in 1978, The Spectator was in very poor shape. It was selling no more than perhaps 15,000 copies a week and losing lots of money for its long-suffering proprietor, Henry Keswick. But we decided to celebrate ostentatiously all the same, both to cheer ourselves up and, we hoped, to attract some publicity to our largely ignored and forgotten magazine.
Looking back at our 150th anniversary issue, I see that our decision to throw a ball was widely frowned upon. Britain was in a mess. The Labour government under James Callaghan was tottering towards its demise in a mire of economic disaster and social unrest. A ball seemed to be against the spirit of the time.
As editor, I wrote in The Spectator's Notebook:
It is both extraordinary and illustrative of the present state of the country how one or two people — close friends of The Spectator at that — felt uneasy when they Learnt of the manner in which we had chosen to celebrate our anniversary. It seemed to them not only a little indecent (or at least inappropriate) but also profoundly unwise. Such conspicuous expenditure on mere entertainment would certainly damage The Spectator's 'image'.
The ball was a great success. It was there that Anna Ford and Mark Boxer met and fell in love in one of the great media romances of the age. It was there that two of the most formidable women in journalism, Lynn Barber and Virginia Ironside, had a notorious public fight.
The ball certainly affected The Spectator's image, but in a way that was wholly beneficial to its circulation. It started the process by which the magazine was to become fashionable with the chattering classes again, a position previously held by its left-wing rival, the New Statesman.
Twenty-five years later, the picture is transformed. If The Spectator isn't actually giving a ball this time, it is because it doesn't need to. Its sales have never been higher. Its image is glamorous and debonair. It no longer has to prove that it isn't dingy.
In 1978, The Spectator was in its way quite grim. It contained no articles at all on consumer topics, such as food and wine. But times have changed. Of the 12 characters featured on the cover of the 175th anniversary issue, no less than two are cooks — Nigella Lawson and the late Jennifer Paterson.
The selection of cover photographs could be thought a little odd, for four of those portrayed are not specially connected with the magazine — John Osborne, Kenneth Tynan, Jonathan Miller and Nancy Mitford — though all of them, of course, wrote for it at one time or another.
And the little dog described on the cover as The Stray' (a reference to a vitriolic attack by The Spectator on fund-raising in 1861 for a dog hospital in Holloway) is wearing an expensive-looking, silverstudded leather collar and is clearly in far better health than Jeffrey Bernard, who is shown above it looking at the point of death.
One might wonder why any selection of articles from The Spectator's first 175 years should include two by traitors, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, and two about the sinking of ocean liners, the Titanic and the Lusitania, but The Spectator has always had a weakness for scandal, and the issue is a worthy celebration of a great magazine and a true reflection of its variety and idiosyncrasy.
When Boris Johnson says in his foreword that there is no other publication in the world in which people write about themselves with such uninhibited candour. he has put his finger on what makes The Spectator special. To the next 25 years?
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