Those swashbuckling days of tabloid journalism

The subordination of editorial purpose to business objectives has meant great stress on brand, pricing, print sites, reader tastes and market shares. In the race for business victory, customers have been wooed and won, while citizens have been left by the wayside.

So it is interesting to hark back to the time in Britain when newspapers lived and died by the front page scoop; when they were unashamed about their political leanings; and when popularising the news through the tabloid format delivered great business results.

It is equally interesting that the publisher who is at the centre of this story, and who let the success go to his head, and began interfering in politics to the point of trying to decide who would be prime minister, was sacked by his board because he had become a liability for the newspaper business.

If one looks around in Indian publishing history, the only person who comes close to the likes of Cecil King of the Daily Mirror, is Ram Nath Goenka; among the regional language publishers, perhaps Eenadu's Ramoji Rao. By popular legend, Goenka was part of the conspiracy that nearly unseated Rajiv Gandhi by presidential decree in 1987.

Politicians paid court to him, rather than the other way round. He was an Indian version of Lord Northcliffe (who made and unmade prime ministers "" notably Asquith in 1916) and in some way to Lord Rothermere (who befriended Hitler in the run-up to the war, ostensibly to pass on information about him to the British government).

Both were uncles of King's in what was an illustrious publishing family (another uncle founded a car company), but the nephew's attempts to unseat Harold Wilson in the 1960s merely lost him his job.

He died a lonely man about a decade ago, quite differently from Northcliffe, for whose hearse thousands lined up in the streets, to see a 90-car cavalcade, and whose assessment by Lloyd George (a friend turned foe) is worth quoting: "He had the knack of divining what the public wanted, say, a white elephant, and of seeking one out and getting it into his menagerie. Having got it he knew how to advertise it...Northcliffe did many good things, but the truth is that he had a bad effect on the public mind."

Newspapers, then, were about cheerful roguery. Along the way, they championed various causes and gave voice to the newly enfranchised in Britain, thereby transforming both journalism and politics.

So this book is not just about King, who isn't rivetting copy because there is almost nothing on strategy, pricing, brand and the rest of it in a story of striking business success.

Indeed, the most interesting fact to emerge about King is that he told his wife-to-be that he didn't intend to be faithful to her, and kept his promise.

The story, then, is more about an interesting time in newspaper publishing when a small start-up (the Daily Mirror) could quickly become the world's largest selling newspaper and the flagship of the world's largest publishing company.

And it once again makes one think of Goenka's Express, as the paper whose stories excited debate in Parliament, instead of a bored flip to the page with the society pictures.

The man at the heart of this editorial enterprise, and the book is as much about him, is Hugh Cuddlipp, who worked his way through the provincial press with many bogus stories that won him headlines, and ended up on Fleet Street to become one of the celebrated editors of his day.

He, with King's support, transformed a dull, respectable, middle-class paper into a young, exciting, left-wing, working class product with big pictures and bold headlines and byte-sized news.

There was crime, sensationalism, astrology and sentiment, apart from sex, sport and social conscience. And personal success: yachts, fine wines, many women.

It is ironic (and the book begins with this episode) that Cuddlipp finally had to stick the knife into King when he became too much of a liability, and succeed him as publisher, without making a great job of it.

So Murdoch came along, and it was now his Sun that succeeded in out-Cuddlipping Cuddlipp's Mirror ""but that is an altogether different story. British tabloid journalism was probably born with King and Cuddlipp, and their rival Beaverbrook's Daily Express, one of whose editors recounts in his memoirs how he had to accompany Beaverbrook on his overseas travels so that Beaverbrook could pinch his foreign exchange allowance (we got our forex rules from the Brits, don't forget), and dictate the editorials that the editor then dispatched to London.

King wasn't that kind of publisher, and Cuddlipp wasn't that kind of editor. In many ways, both were the best of their breed, with some typical weaknesses too. If you are interested in newspapers, and aren't too caught up in today's more colourless journalism, this is worth a read.

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Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King

and the Glory Days of Fleet Street

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Secker & Warburg

Price: £ 20