The secret to The Spectator’s 196 years of success

What explains The Spectator’s unprecedented success? No weekly in the world has matched its longevity: 196 years and 10,200 issues. In my history of The Spectator, 10,000 Not Out, I talk about the battles that shaped the magazine. It has long been a voice for classic liberal values and in its best moments, kept doing so even when support for those causes was unpopular. But when we look at its history, we see its best moments – and its shakier ones.

The founding spirit of The Spectator was a humble-born Scotsman, whose energy and principle took London’s media class by storm. Robert Rintoul’s career south of the border began with the weekly newspaper The Atlas, but after two years he left in protest at owners who sought to ‘vulgarise and betwaddle’ the title. Instead his new venture was funded by a circle of Radical friends, including Joseph Hume, the indefatigable Aberdeenshire MP, and the Hon.