As he left the editorship of The Spectator in March 1984, Alexander Chancellor wrote in this space: ‘When I joined the paper as editor in 1975, people were in the habit of asking me what my “policy” was going to be… How desperately uneasy this question made me. If there was a lavatory in the vicinity, I would lock myself inside it. I was sure I ought to have a “policy”… but I most certainly hadn’t got one.’ As his assistant editor, I witnessed the dismay on the faces of proprietors, advertisers and various big shots at Alexander’s answers to this sort of question. He would say, ‘Well, we should publish some good articles, I suppose,’ and then give his distinctive laugh, which sounded like a schoolboy imitating a machine-gun.
Alexander felt genuinely insecure at not being able to come up with a ‘policy’: it was to do with his lack of intellectual self-confidence.
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