Towards the end of The Chief, his keenly researched biography of Lord Northcliffe, the Daily Mail founder and “Britain’s greatest press baron”, the historian Andrew Roberts observes: “Great men are seldom nice men.”
Northcliffe, or Alfred Harmsworth as he was born, possessed several unpleasant characteristics. He was an outspoken antisemite – alas, not unusual in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; he was a devoted imperialist and jingoist, a remorseless bully and, in the inglorious tradition of the job, a towering hypocrite in matters of social morality.
