Introducing The Spectator Book of Wit, Humour and Mischief

Even now, I’m not sure I can believe it has actually happened. The Spectator Book of Wit, Humour and Mischief was conceived, possibly over lunch, as a belated follow-up to Christopher Howse’s 1990 volume The Wit Of The Spectator, and as the first of a putative series of themed books using the vast and rarely tapped resource of the Spectator archive. My friend and publisher Richard Beswick and I pitched the idea to the magazine’s seniors, and they embraced it with enthusiasm. They gave me the run of the website and the digitised archive, but being the sort of person who writes for The Spectator, I favoured a more old-fashioned approach. I asked if I might come into the office once a week and leaf through binders of old magazines, prospecting for gold. I thought it might take three months of Fridays. It took nearly a year.

The magazine has new and elegant offices in Old Queen Street in St James’s, a short stagger from the Houses of Parliament.