Anthony Howard

Anthony Michell Howard, CBE (12 February 1934 – 19 December 2010) was a British journalist, broadcaster and writer. He was the editor of the New Statesman and The Listener and the deputy editor of The Observer. He selected the passages used in The Crossman Diaries, a book of entries taken from Richard Crossman's The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister.

Early life Howard was born in London, the son of Canon (William) Guy Howard (1902–1981), a Church of England clergyman (at the time of his son's birth, priest in charge at Christ Church, Victoria Road, Kensington), and Janet Rymer (1904–1983; née Hogg). He studied at Purton Stoke School at Kintbury in Berkshire and Highgate Junior School, followed by Westminster School and Christ Church at the University of Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence. In 1954 he was chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club and, the following year, President of the Oxford Union. an action for which he was almost court-martialled.

In January 1965 Howard joined The Sunday Times as its Whitehall correspondent, reporting on the activities of senior civil servants. He saw his Whitehall brief as being in advance of the journalistic practices of that time. Cabinet Ministers were instructed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's private secretary not to co-operate with Howard. Civil servants received similar instructions. Wilson is thought by journalist John Simpson to have had a preference for secrecy and to have been fearful that such a practice would give his enemies and rivals a potential outlet. He was, though, absent from his post when President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in the Presidential election of 1968, which did not help relations with David Astor, Observer editor at the time. (Cook also contributed articles), James Fenton, Christopher Hitchens, and Martin Amis

Under Howard's editorship the magazine published a rare non-British contributor: Gabriel García Márquez in March 1974, on the overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile the previous September. Perhaps out of a sense of balance, he featured a series of critiques of the British Left, by the magazine's former editor Paul Johnson, a drinking companion and friend of Howard's, whose political rightward drift was well advanced by then. He then edited The Listener for two years (1979–81).

Howard was deputy editor of The Observer (1981–88), where one of his journalist protégés was the journalist and (later) novelist Robert Harris, whom he appointed as the newspaper's political correspondent. His professional relationship with the editor, Donald Trelford, ultimately broke down over allegations that Trelford had allowed the newspaper's proprietor Tiny Rowland to interfere in editorial content. After leaving The Observer, following an ill-fated editorial coup against Trelford,

Later career His last editorial positions before turning freelance were at The Times as Obituaries editor (1993–99), on his memoirs, Life in the Jungle: My Autobiography (2000), and later published an official biography, Basil Hume: The Monk Cardinal (2005).

Personal life Howard married Carol Anne Gaynor, a journalist, in 1965. He was the lover of Corinna Adam (former wife of journalist Neal Ascherson) for several decades, but did not leave his wife. Corinna Adam, also known by her married name, died in March 2012. At the time of his death, Howard lived between London and Ludlow. Since 2013 the annual Anthony Howard Award has offered one young journalist two six-month paid placements on the politics desks of the New Statesman and The Times.