Remembering the journalist John Thompson, who turned down the editorship of The Spectator

John Thompson, who died last week at the age of 93, could have been editor of The Spectator if he had wanted. He was offered the job in 1970 by its then proprietor, Harry Creighton, but with typically good judgment he declined. Creighton, a jovial, rumbustious manufacturer of machine tools, fired two editors, Nigel Lawson and George Gale, before making himself editor in their place. One of his reasons for doing this was almost certainly to save money; for the magazine was in steep decline and its losses were growing. An editor’s salary was a useful saving. So if John Thompson had taken the job, he would doubtless have eventually been fired as well. Nevertheless, many journalists would have jumped at the chance to edit such a famous title, even if it meant working for an overexcited and unpredictable employer. Not John, however, for whom fame, social cachet and the perks that came with an editorship meant nothing at all.

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A modest, self-effacing man, he cared deeply about journalism but was far less interested in his own status than in working in a place where journalism was practised to his own fastidious standards. That place turned out to be Lord Hartwell’s Sunday Telegraph, which John first joined as a feature and leader writer. But in 1976, to his own and other people’s surprise, he was made editor for the final ten years of the Hartwell proprietorship. He had previously worked for seven years as The Spectator’s deputy editor, serving under editors who were both later to become Conservative cabinet ministers, Iain Macleod and Nigel Lawson; and he retained for the rest of his life a great affection for and interest in this magazine. I became The Spectator’s editor in succession to Creighton in 1975; and when, nine years later, I was sacked and sitting around, feeling somewhat at a loss, it was John who came to my rescue by offering me a job as features editor on the Sunday Telegraph.