Champion of the common man – and woman – who created the world’s greatest media empire
The Dubliner born in poverty who was feted by Victorian high society, kept a pet alligator and changed WWI
ACENTURY on from the death of ‘the greatest newspaperman’ in British journalism, eminent biographer Andrew Roberts this week described the extraordinary life and achievements of Lord Northcliffe, the founder of the Daily Mail.
‘Great men are seldom nice men,’ declared the historian, reflecting on a ‘genius’ who was both revered and condemned by friends and enemies alike.
What has never been disputed, however, was that the mercurial Alfred Harmsworth, who later became Baron and Viscount Northcliffe, known to all as ‘The Chief’, shaped the modern media like no one else – and continues to do so to this day.
Roberts’s new biography of Northcliffe, The Chief, is based on unique access to the Harmsworth family archive. It has been widely acclaimed for its uncompromising warts-andall portrayal of the complex and controversial character who invented popular journalism. Not only did Northcliffe create newspaper giants such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, he rescued many more, including The Times and The Observer, and, above all, stuck maxim: ‘There is a great art into his own feeling the pulse of the people.’
After Northcliffe’s death in 1922, his business empire passed to his brother, the first Viscount Rothermere, and other members of the family, in whose hands it remains today.
Introducing a lecture to celebrate publication of the book, Jonathan Harmsworth, the fourth Viscount Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail, explained how the Northcliffe legacy lives on: ‘He has been an inspiration to newspapermen for over a century. He continues to be the soul of our newspaper to this day.’
It was at the Royal Geographical Society that Alfred Harmsworth launched an AngloAmerican bid to claim the North Pole in 1894 (it failed, although he did end up with a 43-squaremile patch of ice named ‘Alfred Island’ in his honour).
This was but one of numerous campaigns which the relentless Northcliffe launched in the course of his long career at the helm of the most successful media empire on earth. His appetite for reform and innovation – on his readers’ behalf – ranged from mandatory rear-view mirrors and pasteurised milk to hat design and motorised fire engines.
His passion for technology led directly to the first flights across the English Channel and the Atlantic. He would also shape world history. For, as Mr Roberts acknowledged: ‘This was the man who directed much of the conduct of the First World War with ideas that would be used in the Second World War, too.’
Alfred was born in poverty in Chapelizod, in Dublin, in 1865, the eldest of the 14 children of Alfred and Geraldine Harmsworth (11 of them would reach adulthood). In 1867, the family moved to London, where Alfred senior qualified as a barrister.
Having fathered, at 16, an illegitimate son by the family’s maid, the young Alfred became a freelance journalist, quickly developing a flair for what readers wanted – as opposed to what editors thought they should be given.
Victorian education reforms and rising social mobility had created a literate and aspirational working and lower-middle class readership who did not enjoy the ponderous news coverage in the traditional press. Alfred had an intuitive feel for what they would prefer, and he gave it to them at half the price.
After cutting his teeth as the innovative editor of Bicycling News (he loved cycling), he set up a magazine called Answers to Correspondents, packed with stories under headlines such as ‘How To Cure Freckles’ or ‘What The Queen Eats’.
It was a huge success and led to similar magazines, together with an early newspaper acquisition, the ailing Evening News. Harmsworth’s obsessive, competitive attention to detail and his appetite for hard graft, turned the paper around, with a 500% hike in readership.
Soon, he was rich enough to buy his adored mother a ministately home in North London as well as a country house for himself in Kent (where he kept a pet alligator in the greenhouse).
He married Mary, the sister of a childhood friend, but there would be no children from the marriage. In 1896, he established the Daily Mail, having chosen the name, in part, because it was easy for newspaper boys to shout it out.
Having by now been joined by his brother, Harold (the future Lord Rothermere), he had scored an instant hit. Like all Northcliffe’s publications, it catered to popular tastes with punchy news stories – what he called ‘surprises’ – and was also the first paper with a page aimed specifically at women. But it was never coarse. As Mr 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 bestselling paper in the world, with more than a million copies sold daily. It was fiercely independent, but espoused a Conservative, Unionist and imperialist view of the world. Any sensible politician wanted to be in it, even if the Conservative prime minister, the Marquess of Salisbury, observed sniffily that it was ‘written by shop boys for shop boys’. There were very many more shop boys than marquesses in late Victorian Britain, however, and they had a thirst for knowledge.
Indeed, the acceptance of Harmsworth into the top echelons 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 land, Harmsworth received a peerage and, at 40, was the youngest member of the House of Lords. It was said he chose the name ‘Northcliffe’ because he wanted a title beginning 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. It wasn’t just down to a love of engines, though. He had befriended the Wright brothers and watched their early prototypes take off.
He could see war on the horizon and the need for Britain to have aerial firepower. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 underlined the extent of his power and influence. As Britain’s war prospects waned, he became convinced that Herbert Asquith was not the man for the job of prime minister – and he said so. He was adamant that the soldiers in the trenches were being betrayed by a lack of proper artillery ammunition. He was accused of sedition and the Mail was, famously, burned on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.
But he stood firm and would be proved right in the end. He helped curtail the disastrous Dardanelles campaign and pressed for conscription as the make-or-break way of ending the war. The new prime minister, David Lloyd George, duly sent Northcliffe off to the US to rally assistance for the UK. On his return, he ran the ministry for propaganda in enemy countries.
The loss of four nephews in the war would fuel in him an enduring hatred for Germany. However, his health was failing. In 1921, he embarked on a round-the-world tour and contracted the malignant endocarditis which cost him his sanity and, ultimately, his 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 unflinching adoration of the British Empire, his rickety private life and his anti-semitism. Yet none could deny his achievements. Even the vanquished Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who loathed 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 him with.’ His old rival, Max Aitken, acknowledged him as ‘the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street’. Mr Roberts said that, for all Northcliffe’s many flaws, ‘he showed tremendous moral courage. He was a great man’.
‘He showed tremendous moral courage’