Robert Barrington-Ward - Newspaper Career

Newspaper Career

Postwar demobilization left Barrington-Ward a man without a position. While he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn a few weeks after the end of the war, early in 1919 he received an invitation to become an assistant editor of a Sunday newspaper The Observer. Though his initial interview with the paper's editor, J. L. Garvin, did not go well, a successful stint as a special correspondent to the Paris Peace Conference soon won Garvin over. The position provided Barrington-Ward with valuable experience in the management and operations of a newspaper, and he developed a close friendship with the legendary editor.

In April 1927 Dawson invited Barrington-Ward to return to The Times as assistant editor. Barrington-Ward accepted, taking over most of the day-to-day administration of the office. His responsibilities soon grew: in 1929, he began writing most of the leading articles on domestic policy and European matters, and in 1934 he was made deputy editor. Convinced by his own military service of the futility of the First World War, he supported Dawson's views in favour of appeasing Germany in the 1930s, though he switched to opposing further German expansion after the Germans invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

Two months later Barrington-Ward was approached by the owner of The Times, John Jacob Astor, about succeeding Dawson as editor upon Dawson's retirement, which was anticipated by the end of the year. Though Barrington-Ward accepted, Dawson's departure was conditional on the continuance of peace, and the outbreak of war led him to postpone his retirement indefinitely. It was not until Astor pressed Dawson for a departure date in May 1941 that the editor finally agreed to leave the paper at the end of September 1941.

As editor, Barrington-Ward was more interested in policy matters than in the business of running a newspaper. Though a Tory democrat in his youth, he became a Labour supporter after the First World War, and adopted an editorial stance more left-wing than that of his predecessors. In terms of the war, Barrington-Ward believed that it was generally the patriotic duty of the paper to support the government, he reserved the right to oppose specific policies, such as the deployment of British troops to Greece in 1944. He enjoyed regular contact with many of the leading figures in the war effort, including the prime minister, Winston Churchill.