Shrewd newspaper founder who became chief censor

Andreas Whittam Smith was a gambler - and the biggest risk he ever took was launching The Independent.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Admittedly, gambling is not the first thing that comes to mind when surveying his long and storied career - careers, in truth, such was the variety of roles he took up.

Nor did his famously serene bearing suggest a man given to living on the edge. One former colleague offered this portrait of his distinctive demeanour: “He appeared to glide down Fleet Street with the dignity of a great old battleship, as though his unbending legs were being propelled along the surface of water by some hidden motor. Once, with a sudden graceful movement calculated not to undermine the impression of a stately progress, he rose an inch or two onto the platform of a slowly moving bus.”

Tall, with a gentle manner and a shy smile, he was routinely dubbed “saintly” or “ecclesiastical” and likened to a bishop rather than a bookie. Yet the deed that became his most abiding legacy - the launch of The Independent in October 1986 - was built on his understanding, and taste for, financial risk. It paid off, and... well, as was once said of Sir Christopher Wren, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

In 1985, Whittam Smith - together with Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds, two younger and similarly risk-friendly journalists with whom he had worked at The Daily Telegraph - made an “all or nothing” move: to embark on the great adventure of conceiving, funding and producing the first new broadsheet in more than a century. He once told Charles Wintour, another distinguished editor, about the genesis of The Independent – and the anecdote, as recalled by Wintour, conjures up for us Whittam Smith’s quick and agile mind.

“One of the many ways in which Eddy Shah [who had just launched the mid-market Today] helped to change Fleet Street was to provide the initial inspiration for the launch of The Independent.