Farewell to a noble figure in Spectator history

Ian Gilmour was not the only proprietor of The Spectator also to be its editor, but he was unquestionably the best. Patrician, wealthy, high-minded, unassuming, the 28-year-old Etonian ex-Grenadier Guardsman raised a number of eyebrows when he bought the magazine in 1954 and took over the editorial reins himself. However, the five years of his editorship were to cause a lot more surprise when, in fostering The Spectator’s libertarian tradition, he not only espoused radical causes but frequently opposed the Eden and Macmillan governments. In some important respects The Spectator under Gilmour’s direction anticipated the free-thinking mood of the 1960s.

He was a junior barrister, in Lord Hailsham’s chambers, and not getting much work when he decided on an impulse that he would like to own a political weekly. This was made feasible with the help of family money and the support of the then co-owner of The Spectator, Angus Watson, who had greatly admired a previous home secretary, Sir John Gilmour, and mistakenly believed him to be Ian Gilmour’s father.

Gilmour had no political ambitions when he bought the magazine — he did not become an MP until 1962 — but it did not take him long to establish his radical credentials. The execution of Ruth Ellis in 1955 (the last woman to be hanged in Britain) provided the occasion for Gilmour to write a devastating leader, castigating the Home Secretary for failing to exercise his prerogative of mercy and calling for capital punishment, which in his view was ‘absolutely indefensible’, to be abolished. Letters of protest poured in, subscriptions were cancelled. Later that same year, Gilmour wrote a signed article on the conviction and imprisonment of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu and two others for homosexual offences. In commenting on ‘the many repellent aspects of this case’ he did not spare the Director of Public Prosecutions; and two years later gave The Spectator’s support to the proposals of the Wolfenden committee.