Edmund Reid

the prevailing westerly wind driving the fog to swirl thickly through its streets. So, as ever, the poor suffered, their lives
sacrificed to indutry. But the end of the 19th century the fogs were diminishing somewhat, but numerous attempts were
made to regulate the amount of smoke cause by industry, but always the business interests prevailed.
The book isn’t all doom and gloom. Ms Corton has managed to gather some highly memorable little stories, such as
the time when an opera at Sadlers Wells had to be abandoned, the fog being so thick in the theatre that the audience
couldn’t see the stage. Or when a a heavy, thick fog joined the congregation inside St Paul’s Cathedral and obscured the
pulpit from which the sermon was delivered, the text being “I am the Light of the World”.
I thoroughly enjoyed this very handsome book. Having struggled through some almost impenetrably written academic
titles and fearing the same from this offering another university press, I was delighted to find that this was a clearly
written, superbly researched, very detailed, and, to me at least, original investigation of the London fog.
Highly recommended.
Original Spin: Downing Street
and The Press in Victorian Britain
Paul Brighton
London: I.B. Taurus, 2015
ISBN: 9781780760599
Hardcover; 280pp; illus; notes; biblio; index
Hardcover £25
The use of the word “spin” to mean putting an event in a favourable light is uncertain. I’ve read
that it comes from baseball, where pitchers put a spin on a ball to control its direction, but it is
far more likely to come from spinning a yarn, an expression which itself derives from the textile
industry. It means telling (an often tall) story. As for the term “spin doctor”, it dates back to 1984.
To the 7th August in fact. The New York Times using the expression for the first time in print -
“Today the competing camps engaged in a game of persuasion and perception: ‘spin doctoring’, as
the craft of explaining to reporters what really happened is known in political circles.”
People of importance have probably always worried about how their contemporaries perceive them, and a few with
an awareness of history will have worried about how future generations would see them - a classic example being the
way in which Henry VII had his predecessor’s reputation blackened, even attributing to Richard III the murder of the
princess in the Tower. With the removal of the “tax on knowledge” and growing literacy among the working classes, the
number of newspapers grew and politicians had more to worry about than how they would be remembered after they
were dead. The newspapers could lose them votes or win them. Quietly, but with determination, it became necessary
to manipulate the truth, to make the unfavourable appear favourable.
It’s often said that newspapers and journalists in in 19th century were fairly low on the status scale. Towards the
end of the 19th century journalism changed. The “New Journalism” catered for a popular audience, the newly literate
man in the street. It didn’t simply report the news, it delivered interpretation and ready made opinion. W T Stead is
often cited as its prime moving force, and Stead also wanted to deliver the story behind the news and so gave birth
to investigative journalism. This was a wholly new phenomenon that politicians, businessmen, and other prominent
individuals did not like. They were used to making statements, not to being probed and questioned and having their
foibles and mistakes exposed to the world.
The “new journalism” flowered with the launch of Alfred Harmsworth’s hugely successful Daily Mail, which Lord
Salisbury described as “written by office boys for office boys”. Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) was probably the first prime
minister to use the press to his own advantage, passing on information in return for favourable reporting and support.
He invited journalists to pleasant social gatherings, he leaked information, wrote anonymous articles, and bestowed
sinecures on newspapermen. His association with The Times’s editor John Thadeus Delane (1817-1879) was described
by Lord Brougham as “devil-worship”. All Victoria’s prime ministers did the same, but most were a little more adept
at pretending otherwise, hiding behind a not altogether untrue disdain for the grubby journalists and newspapers
whilst feting them behind closed doors. Balfour even claimed that he never read the newspapers, which in fact he did.
His uncle, Lord Salisbury, the prime minister at the time of the Ripper murders, also gave an outward appearance of
disdaining newspapers, but in the early part of his career, before he inherited the title and estate and family fortune,
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