Andreas Whittam Smith

The founder of the Independent was also a liberal film censor and a church financier with moral courage

- Patrick Kidd

With the snappy slogan, "It is. Are you?" the first British broadsheet newspaper for more than a century was launched on 7 October 1986. The marketing team had wanted to call it the Meridian, which tested well with focus groups but was hated by its founding editor. Andreas Whittam Smith insisted it be called the Independent.

A vicar's son who wore pinstriped suits and a Garrick tie, Whittam Smith had seemed a model mid-career establishment journalist, city editor of the Daily Telegraph, when he relayed his dream to two colleagues to start a different kind of newspaper. Matthew Symonds and Stephen Glover were persuaded and so a year of fundraising and team-building began.

From a rented office on London's City Road, where furniture was still wrapped in plastic and the electricity supply was erratic, Whittam Smith assembled a staff of 100, many of them refugees from Rupert Murdoch's Wapping-era News UK, others from opposing political wings of the Telegraph and Guardian.

In the chaos, basics were almost forgotten. With weeks to go, they realised there wasn't a dark room. Ironically, high-quality large photographs set the Independent apart right from the start. "It takes time for good writing to be recognised," Whittam Smith said, "but the photos were our ambassadors."