Reposted by David Lyall
My column in this month’s Byline Times is part-obituary for my grandfather and part-comparison with Rupert Murdoch, who was born 6 months before him and is sadly still with us.
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![Mic Wright
" Wonder What It Is About the Billionaire Media Tycoon
That Has Kept Him So Appealing All These Years?'
M
y grandfather, Gordon Briggs, died on 18 September 2026. He was two days away from turning 95.
On the day he was born, the Government abandoned the gold standard. The front page of the Observer didn't carry any headlines but was instead filled with adverts for holidays, hotels, and cruises: "This winter visit Gibraltar and Malta where British currency circulates!"
News moved slower then, but it got faster and faster every year that he lived.
Gordon was four when the BBC first broadcast a regular TV service from Alexandra Palace in London. It only went on air for two hours a day, and it wouldn't be until well after the war that the Briggs family owned a television.
My grandfather was seven when the Daily Telegraph's young foreign correspondent, Clare Hollingworth, broke the news of the German invasion of Poland after spotting "scores, if not hundreds, of tanks lined up ready to go [on the border]". The paper had no bylines then so her front-page scoop was credited to 'Our Own Correspondent' By the time the Daily Mail declared
"VE Day - It's All Over" on its front page.
Gordon was 13. The men who controlled the British media then were the BBC
Director-General, Sir William Haley, and an unruly gang of titled and entitled press barons.
Lord Beaverbrook owned the Daily Express, Sunday Express, and Evening Standard. Lord Kemsley presided over The Sunday Times, the Daily Sketch, and an empire of local titles. Kemsley's brother Lord Camrose had the Daily Telegraph.
Lord Rothermere - second of his name - was proprietor of the Daily Mail, Sunday Dispatch, and Evening News. Brendan Bracken, a Churchill ally, purchased the Financial Times. The Astors owned The Times. And the Carr family ran the News of the World.
The (Manchester) Guardian, along with the Manchester Evening News, were already overseen by the Scott Trust, which had been set up in 1936. The Daily Mi…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vovca6kgp5ge773agrlvr7uu/bafkreigwt7gds7jub32h5top724aqvznjuz6ynuzi4f6x57u4pyief5vv4)
![M
y grandfather, Gordon Briggs, died on 18 September 2026. He was two days away from turning 95.
On the day he was born, the Government abandoned the gold standard. The front page of the Observer didn't carry any headlines but was instead filled with adverts for holidays, hotels, and cruises: "This winter visit Gibraltar and Malta where British currency circulates!"
News moved slower then, but it got faster and faster every year that he lived.
Gordon was four when the BBC first broadcast a regular TV service from Alexandra Palace in London. It only went on air for two hours a day, and it wouldn't be until well after the war that the Briggs family owned a television.
My grandfather was seven when the Daily Telegraph's young foreign correspondent, Clare Hollingworth, broke the news of the German invasion of Poland after spotting "scores, if not hundreds, of tanks lined up ready to go [on the border]". The paper had no bylines then so her front-page scoop was credited to 'Our Own Correspondent'.
By the time the Daily Mail declared](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vovca6kgp5ge773agrlvr7uu/bafkreigvyfzkwhealz43wlv7w5gxd33xurxbh5zxnthcwn4b2gvwyzwsce)