David Astor - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

David Astor was born in London, England, the third child of American-born parents, Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor (1879–1952) and Nancy Witcher Langhorne (1879–1964). The product of an immensely wealthy business dynasty, and raised in the grandeur of a great country estate where the political and intellectual elite of the time gathered, he nevertheless had an instinctive compassion for the poor and those who were the victims of destructive socioeconomic policies.

An extremely shy man, David Astor was greatly influenced by his father but as a young man he rebelled against his strong-willed mother. After Eton he attended Balliol College, Oxford where he suffered a nervous breakdown and left in 1933 without graduating. He was psychoanalysed by Anna Freud and during World War II he served with distinction and was wounded in France. While at Balliol in 1931 he met a young anti-fascist German, named Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was to become the most influential figure in his life. Von Trott's involvement in the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler led to his execution.

In 1936, Astor joined the Yorkshire Post newspaper where he worked for a year before joining his father's newspaper, The Observer which he would eventually edit for 27 years. With his father's advancing age, and high inheritance taxes in England, in 1945 David Astor and his brother transferred ownership of the paper to a board of trustees. The trust contained restrictions so that the paper could not be subject to a hostile takeover but also stipulated that its profits go towards improving the newspaper, promoting high journalistic standards, and required a portion of the profits to be donated to charitable causes.