Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is famous – or notorious, depending upon your politics – for its strongly conservative outlook. Yet it wasn’t always so; it started out in life (in 1855) as a liberal paper, and remained so for perhaps the first 80 years of its existence. (Funny how you get more right-wing as you get older.)

The common perception of it is still as a paper read by retired colonels in south-east English villages, although it’s made some efforts to appear more trendy in recent years (these efforts are mercilessly lampooned by satirical magazine Private Eye as consisting mostly of photos of Liz Hurley and other “posh tottie”).

In spite of continuing pressure from The Times, it’s the broadsheet with the biggest circulation – over 900,000 in November 2006, compared to The Times’s 650,000. Actually, since most of the other national dailies have now switched to a smaller format (easier for commuters to deal with on the increasingly crowded British trains), technically it’s the only national broadsheet on traditional paper. (The Financial Times is still a broadsheet, but of course is famously printed on salmon-pink paper.)

It’s part of the Telegraph Media Group Ltd, which was owned by Canadian businessman Conrad, Lord Black from 1986 to 2004, at which point he sold it to the Press Holdings company owned by the Barclay twins (Sir Frederick and Sir David).

Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

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