Backing Britain for 125 glorious years

MICHAEL Parkinson, later the legendary chat show host, was overawed at his first sight of the Daily Express's magnificent art-deco office in the heart of London. The year was 1959 and he had just been hired as a feature writer for "the most successful, glamorous organisation in Fleet Street". No British papers dazzled more brightly than the Express.

- By Leo McKinstry Historian and Daily Express Columnist

This Thursday marks the 125th anniversary of the Daily Express's foundation, a milestone that evokes both nostalgia and pride. Fleet Street has long vanished as the home of Britain's newspaper industry, along with great titles like the Morning Post and the News Chronicle, while the press itself is under relentless pressure from other media. Yet, amid all this change, the Express remains a powerful voice in our national life, resolute in defence of our interests and eager to build a better Britain.

This is nothing new. Throughout the 125 years of its existence, the Express has always been a tireless campaigner, as shown today in how we have set the agenda on the issue of assisted dying, Give Us Our Last Rights. The Express even shaped Britain's destiny as the first paper to advocate Britain's independence from Brussels and articulate the case for Brexit freedoms during the Referendum.

That sense of mission also inspired Lord Beaverbrook, the maverick Canadian whose volcanic energy during half a century of ownership pushed the Express to new heights of popularity and influence. Often capricious, sometimes tyrannical, Beaverbrook was feared by many and loathed by some.

Yet his explosive gift for controversy was matched by his passion as a campaigner, most notably in his crusade for tariff reform. His Empire Free Trade initiative led to the adoption in 1929 of the Express's famous logo of a crusader in a chainmail uniform with his sword drawn. The cause of Empire Free Trade faded in the 1930s but the logo has endured.

Dramatic

The paper's founder, Sir Arthur Pearson, had something of the same driven character. The son of a West Country parson, he started in journalism on the magazine Titbits but launched his own publication in 1890, called Pearson's Weekly. It was such a success, the first edition selling a quarter of a million copies, that in 1900 he established the Express as a patriotic, pro-Empire national daily.