Making history, your Daily Mail – officially now Britain’s biggest selling paper

124 years after it was born, a magical new milestone...

ON May 4, 1896, the first copies of a new newspaper rattled off the printing presses and on to Britain’s streets: the Daily Mail. From an unassuming office off Fleet Street, Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, laid the foundation stones of modern popular journalism.

Possessing an unparalleled instinct, his mission was to deliver fresh, bright, accessible, interesting news. To inform and entertain. To hold trenchant views. To embrace family, common sense and patriotism.

In challenging the turgid journalism of the day, it was a historic moment.

And today, all these decades later, your modern Daily Mail has made history all over again, by reaching a magical milestone that would make Lord Northcliffe proud: for the first time, we are officially Britain’s biggest selling daily newspaper.

New industry data for May reveals we have surged past The Sun as the nation’s favourite, with an average Monday to Saturday daily sale of 948,000 copies through UK stores. Incredibly, more than one in four national daily newspapers sold is the Daily Mail.

It’s a seminal achievement. Never before has a middle-market tabloid reached the summit.

The secret to this success? Fast forward from that first paper 124 years ago, and those early guiding principles ring every bit as true today. Like a thread of pearls through the past, they continue to motivate, steer and propel the Mail.

The highest-quality journalism across every part of the paper. The biggest and best scoops. Unrivalled investigations. Ground-breaking campaigns. Unmissable columnists. Brilliant features and analysis. Award-winning sport.

And despite sneers from the achingly trendy, we have never deviated from championing the underdog, the ordinary David being crushed by the State’s overweening Goliath. As Lord Northcliffe rightly said: ‘News is what somebody, somewhere wants to suppress.’

Exposing corruption, fighting for the causes our readers hold dear, and – despite unashamedly nailing our colours to the Conservative cause – doggedly questioning any government that falls short.

In the last weeks alone, by uncovering Covid calamities on testing, care homes and the virus-tracing app, we have focused ministerial minds – and forced U-turns.

And we have not merely been recording and making history. We’ve been ahead of it. A quarter of a century before the Black Lives Matter protests took to the streets, it was the Mail that campaigned to bring justice for murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

In 1911, our drive to improve British bread standards saved lives. This year, our Mail Force crusade to fill troubling gaps in PPE supplies to frontline NHS workers did the same… and who else but the Mail’s readers could help raise £10million in a matter of weeks?

During the First World War, we denounced the inadequate weapons given to troops in Flanders. Today, we fight to end the relentlessly cruel witchhunt against veterans.

Our proud record of direct action stretches from airlifting Vietnamese orphans out of the Saigon cauldron in the 1970s, to mobilising a volunteer army to rid our countryside of the scourge of litter and help free our planet of the environmental menace of plastic.

All this alongside uplifting weekly newspaper sections Inspire, Good Health, Money Mail, Femail and Escape, and the unmatched Weekend Magazine – the nation’s choice with the most comprehensive TV listings of all.

But don’t just take it from us. At the annual Press Awards, regarded as the Oscars of British journalism, the Daily Mail was rewarded with a sackful of the most prestigious prizes – including Daily Newspaper of the Year. And even as we make history, we look to the future.

Tens of thousands are signing up to Mail+. Our digital edition brings you the paper as you love to see it, direct to your computers, tablets and smartphones. With our sister title The Mail on Sunday also breaking circulation records, it’s a winning formula.

Lord Northcliffe would be proud that his dream is still going strong a century after the printing presses first rolled.

And who would he applaud first for our astounding success? You, our marvellously loyal army of readers, who have brought us to this staggering achievement. To quote one of our many famous front pages: Take a bow!