Spectator got the first bite at Tony Blair

 
15 April 2013

Tony Blair may be out of favour with the current Labour leadership, especially after criticising Ed Miliband in the current New Statesman, but at least he got published.

In his early days as a young barrister in the Seventies Blair was frustrated because the Staggers declined his literary efforts. So he offered the rejected items to The Spectator, which published two of them and turned down a third.

Alexander Chancellor, then editor, doesn’t remember meeting the future PM but his deputy Simon Courtauld mentions this in To Convey Intelligence, his book on the magazine’s history.

Blair’s article on Granada Television was included in a collection of famous Spectator writers.

Former Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, who was a boss of both Tony and Cherie Blair, spoke at their wedding in Oxford in 1980. He teased his young protégé for writing for The Spectator instead of the New Statesman.

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