The Spectator
From Free net encyclopedia
- This article is about the British weekly magazine: there are articles on several other magazines called "The Spectator" such as Addison and Steele's influential literary magazine, The Spectator (1711), and the others can be found at The Spectator (disambiguation). See also The American Spectator magazine.
Image:The Spect.jpg The Spectator is a British magazine, established in 1828 and published weekly. It is owned by the same people as The Daily Telegraph (the Barclay brothers) and claims to be the oldest continuously-published magazine in the English language. Its principal subject area is politics, about which it generally takes a robust and even provocative conservative line. The magazine also has extensive arts pages on books, music, opera, and film and TV reviews.
Editorship of The Spectator has been a route to high office in the British Conservative Party; past editors include Iain Macleod, Ian Gilmour and Nigel Lawson, all of whom became cabinet ministers.
Contents |
Policy positions
In 1904 it raised concerns about the anti-British and Pan-Asian attitudes prevalent amongst Indian students in Japan.
Like its sister publication The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is Atlanticist in outlook, favouring close ties with the United States rather than with the European Union, and it is usually supportive of Israel. However, it has expressed strong doubts about the Iraq war, and some of its contributors, such as Matthew Parris and Stuart Reid, express a more Americosceptic, old-school conservative line. Other contributors such as Mark Steyn argue from a neoconservative and usually pro-Bush position.
Contributors
The Spectator has always had room for eccentric contributors in its "back of magazine" sections. These have included Jeffrey Bernard and Taki. Joan Collins contributes regularly as Guest Diarist.
Recent times
The magazine has prospered in recent times. Under its editor Boris Johnson apparently clumsy public relations did no harm, and Johnson's Wodehousian aura may have distracted from the political line. He resigned in December 2005, on taking up an appointment furthering his polical career, as Shadow Minister for Higher Education, a front bench position as Ruth Kelly's opposite number.
The circulation was not at all hindered by the notoriety the magazine achieved after revalations about Johnson's affair with one of his columnists Petronella Wyatt, the extramarital adventures of its publisher Kimberley Quinn and affair of the associate editor Rod Liddle with Alicia Monckton. The nickname The Sextator gained currency amongst media wits.
Editors
- Robert Stephen Rintoul 1828, as founder, to 1861 when the position was shared with Hutton
- R. H. Hutton 1861 – 87
- John St. Loe Strachey 1887-1925
- Evelyn Wrench 1925-32
- Wilson Harris 1932-52
- Walter Taplin 1953-4
- Ian Gilmour 1954-9
- Brian Inglis 1959-62
- Iain Hamilton 1962-3
- Iain Macleod 1963-5
- Nigel Lawson 1966-70
- George Gale 1970-73
- Harold Creighton 1973-75
- Alexander Chancellor 1975-84
- Charles Moore 1984-90
- Dominic Lawson 1990–5
- Frank Johnson 1995-9
- Boris Johnson 1999-2005
- Matthew d'Ancona 2006-