Alexander Chancellor, who died this morning aged 77, created the modern Spectator. Since 2012, he has also been a weekly columnist with his Long Life column – which darted from the vagaries of growing old, to memories of his time as editor of The Talk of the Town in the New Yorker, to the wicked foxes who nabbed his beloved ducks at his Northamptonshire house.
Spectator editor from 1975 to 1984, he was responsible for giving the magazine the amusing, anarchic, clever but readable feel it has today.
It was Chancellor who employed Taki – still happily with us – and had the inspired idea of pairing his High Life column with its polar opposite, Low Life, by Jeffrey Bernard. While Taki cruised the high seas on his yacht, fearlessly taking apart the dodgy mores of the international jet set, Jeff trawled the gutters of Soho, recounting the tales of the flotsam and jetsam of drink-fuelled bohemia.
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