The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph, British newspaper, the best-selling daily broadsheet in the United Kingdom.

The Daily Telegraph and Courier, as it was initially titled, was founded in 1855 by Colonel Arthur Sleigh in order to publicize a grievance against the Duke of Cambridge. The paper was published on June 29 by Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, who took over the Telegraph when Sleigh could not pay his printing bill. The paper was relaunched less than three months later with Edward Levy-Lawson (J. M. Levy’s son) and Thornton Leigh Hunt as editors. Hunt set out to “report all striking events in science [‘fashion…invention…new methods of conducting business…and all other events’], so told that the intelligent public can understand what has happened and can see its bearing on our daily life and our future”. Hunt began the paper’s tradition of special reporting—including commentary from the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War—and also included unusual and often sensationalist news, giving extensive coverage to lurid crime stories. Together these strands gave the Telegraph a circulation of 27,000 by January 1856, far exceeding the 10,000 (in 1855) circulation of its rival The Times.

Under Hunt the paper supported the Liberal Party, the reform of the House of Lords, and opposed corporal punishment in the military and capital punishment. However, in 1873 Hunt died and the less liberal Edwin Arnold became the Telegraph’s editor. Arnold began to favour the policies of Benjamin Disraeli over William Gladstone, and employed journalists who supported British Imperialism. With Arnold’s passion for exploration and Levy-Lawson’s money the paper contributed to Sir Harry Johnson's exploration of Kilimanjaro and the 1874 expedition to Africa by Henry Morton Stanley, thereby obtaining first-hand thrilling news for its readers. The paper also made history when a reporter discovered the murderer of a businessman and printed the first portrait of the culprit, which resulted in his arrest, trial, and execution. Circulation continued to increase, reaching a daily average of over 240,000 in 1877.

William Leonard Courtney became the editor in 1899, and also worked as a literary and drama critic for the paper until 1925. He employed the notable journalist James Louis Garvin (later the editor of The Observer), and military men (including Basil Liddell Hart) as war correspondents who could provide important scoops. The paper also published works by Rudyard Kipling and serialized several books on World War I and the memoirs of Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George.

Upon the retirement of Edward Levy-Lawson, his son Henry Levy-Lawson became proprietor in 1903. He sold the Telegraph in 1927 to William Ewart Berry, who revived The Daily Telegraph’s circulation, doubling it to 200,000 within weeks by halving the price to 1d. In 1937 the right-wing Morning Post was bought and eventually amalgamated with the Telegraph. The circulation increased from 830,000 in 1939 to over one million by March 1947. Upon Berry’s death in 1954 his son Sir (William) Michael Berry, who had worked at the paper since 1946, became editor-in-chief.

Michael Berry instigated several successful features and in 1961 The Sunday Telegraph was launched, followed in 1964 by the first newspaper colour magazine supplement. In that same year circulation was double that of its closest quality rival, The Times. In 1985 Canadian media tycoon Conrad Black acquired a controlling interest in the group and two years later his firm, Hollinger, took over. Lord Black was forced to step down as chief executive of Hollinger after an inquiry into financial irregularities in 2003, and his attempt to sell his stake in the company, including control of The Telegraph, to Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, the owners of the Scotsman newspaper group, was blocked in the US court. The Barclay brothers later bought the Telegraph group from Hollinger for £729.5 million in 2004.

Cover price reductions in the 1990s boosted circulation. Max Hastings became the editor of The Daily Telegraph in 1986; in 1995 Charles Moore, who had previously been editor of The Sunday Telegraph from 1992 to 1995, took over from him, and Dominic Lawson in turn became the editor at The Sunday Telegraph. Moore retired as editor of The Daily Telegraph in 2003 and was succeeded by Martin Newland who stood down himself in November 2005 following the appointment of John Bryant as editor-in-chief; in 2005 Lawson was succeeded as editor of The Sunday Telegraph by Sarah Sands, who was replaced in 2006 by Patience Wheatcroft. In 1994 the Telegraph became the first British daily newspaper to be published on the Internet as the Electronic Telegraph, renamed as telegraph.co.uk in 2000.