Anthony Howard, the people's spy in the corridors of power for 50 years

Distinguished career: Anthony Howard
Peter Kellner12 April 2012

Anthony Howard was the most perceptive political journalist of his generation. He loved politics and liked politicians, but never let his friendships stand in the way of a good story or a piece of mischief.

He was a Labour man who was close to people in all parties - most notably his Oxford contemporary, and later landlord, Michael Heseltine. Tony ("Anthony" only ever appeared in bylines) never quite fitted in. I say that as a profound compliment, for it was what made him such a good journalist. As a junior officer in the British Army during the Suez debacle in 1956, he was appalled by the madness of the venture and the lies told to defend it; his account, which appeared in the New Statesman and kick-started his journalistic career, caused a sensation and nearly led to his prosecution.

In the mid-Sixties the Sunday Times appointed him Britain's first "Whitehall Correspondent", with a mission to uncover what the Civil Service was up to. The appointment did not last long because Whitehall closed ranks against him. Thirty years later, when the official records were released, Tony was thrilled to discover how much time, and with what venom, Harold Wilson, the then prime minister, had devoted to killing Tony's mission. He rightly regarded Wilson's animosity as a badge of honour.

In the Eighties, Tony was deputy editor of The Observer. He did a fine job despite, or perhaps because of, his contempt for both the paper's editor, Donald Trelford, and its owner, Lonrho's "Tiny" Rowland. One day when Tony and I had lunch, when I was the paper's polling analyst, Tony asked me what I thought of Rowland. Not knowing his view, I answered cautiously that Rowland was perhaps a bit of a rogue. "Rogue?" Tony bellowed back. "The man is a complete crook".

Throughout his career - he was also a distinguished editor of the New Statesman in the Seventies, an outstanding obituaries editor of the Times in the Nineties, and a fine biographer - Tony retained his inquiring and critical faculties, even as he entertained the targets of his criticism to lunch at the Gay Hussar in Soho.

He was appointed a member of the editorial independence committee of the Evening Standard in April last year. Throughout his 50-year career he was the people's spy inside the corridors of power. Political journalism offers no finer epitaph than that.

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