Fifty Years before the Masthead - The Elysian Fields

Anthony Howard takes an autobiographical journey through 50 years in the newspaper industry. Howard gives up the editorship of the BBC publication The Listener to become deputy editor of The Observer. He recruits Robert Harris who recalls his employer once comparing the future author of Fatherland's prose style to 'something assembled by a perfectly competent pork butcher'. Life at The Observer proves to be a mixed blessing under the proprietorship of Tiny Rowland, the chief executive of Lonrho, who is keen for the paper to support Margaret Thatcher until they fall out over her failure to stop Mohamed Al Fayed buying Harrods (which Roland wanted for himself). Rescue comes in the form of a job at the BBC, followed by work on the obituaries page of the Times.