Daily Express - History

History

The Daily Express was founded in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson. Pearson sold the title after losing his sight and it was bought in 1916 by the future Lord Beaverbrook. It was one of the first papers to carry gossip, sports, and women's features, and the first newspaper in Britain to have a crossword. The Russian communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote despatches for the paper following his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1929. It moved in 1931 to 120 Fleet Street, a specially commissioned art deco building. Under Beaverbrook the newspaper achieved a phenomenally high circulation, setting records for newspaper sales several times throughout the 1930s. Its success was partly due to an aggressive marketing campaign and a vigorous circulation war with other populist newspapers. Beaverbrook also discovered and encouraged a gifted editor named Arthur Christiansen, who showed an uncommon gift for staying in touch with the interests of the reading public. The paper also featured Alfred Bestall's Rupert Bear cartoon and satirical cartoons by Carl Giles. An infamous front page headline of these years was "Judea Declares War on Germany", published on 24 March 1933.

The Express had started printing in Manchester in 1927 and in 1938 moved to the 'Black Lubyianka' building on the same site in Great Ancoats Street. It opened a similar building in Glasgow in 1936 in Albion Street. Glasgow printing ended in 1974 and Manchester in 1989 on the company's own presses. Scottish and Northern editions are now printed by facsimile in Glasgow and Preston respectively by contract printers, London editions at Westferry Printers.

In March 1962, Beaverbrook was attacked in the House of Commons for running "a sustained vendetta" against the British Royal Family in the Express titles. In the same month The Duke of Edinburgh described the Express as "a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal and imagination. It is a vicious paper." At the height of Beaverbrook's time in control, he told a Royal Commission on the press that he ran his papers "purely for the purpose of making propaganda". The arrival of television and the public's changing interests took their toll on circulation, and following Beaverbrook's death in 1964, the paper's circulation declined for several years. During this period the Express, practically alone among mainstream newspapers, was vehemently opposed to entry into what became the European Economic Community.

"I run the paper for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive".

The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers. In 1982 Trafalgar House spun off its publishing interests into a new company, Fleet Holdings, under the leadership of Lord Matthews, but this succumbed to a hostile takeover by United Newspapers in 1985. Under United's ownership, the Express titles moved from Fleet Street to Blackfriars Road in 1989. As part of a marketing campaign designed to increase circulation, the paper was renamed The Express in 1996 (with the Sunday Express becoming The Express on Sunday).

Express Newspapers was sold to publisher Richard Desmond in 2000, by which time the names had reverted to Daily Express and Sunday Express. In 2004 the newspaper moved to its present location on Lower Thames Street in the City of London.

On 31 October 2005 UK Media Group Entertainment Rights secured majority interest from the Daily Express on Rupert Bear. They paid £6 million for a 66.6% control of the character. The Express Newspaper retains minority interest of one-third plus the right to publish Rupert Bear stories in certain Express publications.