Spectator’s Alexander Chancellor dies aged 77

THE former editor of The Spectator magazine, Alexander Chancellor, died yesterday aged 77 after a short illness.

Highly regarded as a writer and editor, he launched two newspaper magazines at The Independent and Sunday Telegraph.

In 1993 he spent a year in the United States working as an editor at The New Yorker magazine, where he oversaw the Talk Of The Town section. He wrote a memoir about his experiences called Some Times In America.

Fellow Spectator editor Charles Moore said last night: ‘He was an extremely good judge of talent. He let a thousand flowers bloom and he GOOD JUDGE: Alexander Chancellor ‘let talent bloom’ knew how to find the right flowers. He had a strong ideas about what was a good or bad article but he didn’t get in the way of talent with his ego. He encouraged talent.’

Mr Chancellor, an Old Etonian, edited The Spectator from 1975 to 1984 and is credited with creating its distinctive modern style, described by one contributor as ‘amusing, anarchic, clever but readable’.

In 2014, Mr Chancellor became editor of The Oldie, a magazine he helped to start, after the resignation of his friend Richard Ingrams. He contributed a column for the Guardian and since 2012 wrote the Long Life column in The Spectator.

He was appointed a CBE in 2012 for services to journalism.

Former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland died yesterday aged 78. He had been battling prostate cancer. He headed the board of governors between 1996 and 2001 before taking senior roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company and BT.