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Sales figures for UK magazines are published today and The Spectator is delighted to announce the biggest increase in its 192-year history. The bet we made returning the furlough money last summer has paid off. When we packed up for lockdown last year, we feared the worst and furloughed staff. But we found the demand for our journalism had only increased. We were badly hit (newsagent sales and events especially) but saw we had a way out. In 2019, we sold an average 80,455 copies globally. We set a goal of hitting 100,000 (which would mean overtaking the weekday sales of two newspapers). We returned the furlough money to the taxpayer, and asked people who liked our journalism to pay for it.

If you show up, people will vote for you. That was the lesson from crucial swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan last time around, where Donald Trump lapped Hillary Clinton almost at a 3-to-1 pace in the closing weeks of the 2016 election. Swing voters may not appreciate the President’s rank candor and blustery attitudes, but at least he turns up. Right now Joe Biden is up six points nationally and is hoping to coast to an electoral victory on auto-pilot.This time around, Team Harris-Biden has paid fealty to Wisconsin, through in-person appearances. The campaign also has Florida in its sights, where recent polling shows Biden in dire trouble with the southern part of the state’s Latino population.

How did you find out about the death of one of sport’s greatest legends? For me, it was while I was cooking dinner and idly scrolling through my phone, waiting for the oven to heat up. I saw a screenshot of a TMZ Instagram story posted to Twitter. 'KOBE BRYANT DEAD IN HELICOPTER CRASH', it blared. I did what anyone else does in this day and age and sent it down my groupchat. I had no idea whether it was true, whether it was a malicious prank, or hack, or anything else. I just wanted to be the one to share it first. As news spread across social media and screenshots turned into shots from the scene in Calabasas, the only certainty seemed to be that no one knew what was going on.

We can today announce that The Spectator’s sales have hit another record high: 77,889 for the first half of this year, up 9 per cent year-on-year. Print subscriptions are growing at their fastest rate since 1995, but we’re recruiting new subscribers through digital means. We hear a lot about the decline of print, or even ‘subscription fatigue’, so ours is an unusual story. And one that I’d like to tell you about in more detail. The Spectator is the world’s oldest weekly, but its sales are at a 191-year high and growing fast.

The UK magazine industry releases its circulation figures today, and I’m delighted to announce that sales of The Spectator are at another all-time high. We sold an average 76,201 copies in the second half of last year, up by over 7 per cent on the first half of the year. Subscriptions are driving this growth: they’re now up 50 per cent over the last ten years – a figure that’s all the more remarkable given how bleak it has been for print media. Digital-only subscriptions are soaring – up 32 per cent in the second half of last year, compared to the first half. But not at the expense of print, where sales now stand near an all-time high, at 62,679.

Sales of The Spectator broke through an all-time high three years ago, and we’ve kept growing ever since. The latest industry figures, for the first half of the year, are out today – and I’m delighted to say that it’s our best-ever start to any year. Our worldwide sales averaged 71,102 in the first half of this year, up 1,939 from the same period last year. I’d also like to share some other figures. Evening Blend, our daily newsletter, has now broken through 40,000 subscribers (you can sign up free to it here) and it’s growing fast, on account of it being the best evening newsletter anywhere. We offer it free to those who register for the website, and reading the Blend every day makes new registrants more likely to subscribe.

The magazine industry releases annual circulation figures today and the results for The Spectator are historic in two ways. First: our sales are at a record high, at 73,328, which is quite something for the world’s oldest weekly magazine. But we can today announce something I never thought I’d say: sales of the print magazine have now surpassed their 2006 peak to hit a new all-time high of 62,940. The Spectator celebrates its 190th birthday in July and will soon become the first weekly in history to print a 10,000th edition. Never in our long history have more people been reading (and, more importantly, buying) the print magazine. Our archivist, Prof David Butterfield, has been building a sales chart dating back to our first issue in July 1828. It’s above.

The UK magazine industry figures have just been published, and The Spectator has an extraordinary set of results to report. Our sales stand at the highest level in our 189-year history. We are not just the oldest weekly magazine in the world, but today’s ABC figures show that we’re growing faster than any comparable magazine with sales up 8 per cent year-on-year. The introduction of a paywall has not stopped our traffic hitting an all-time high. Our new podcast, Coffee House Shots, has released 100 episodes since the election announcement, with over 1.3 million listens. And this in a tough market. Newspaper sales have fallen by more than a third in the last ten years: it has never been easier to find news and analysis for free online.

UK print sales up 10pc in a year - fastest of any UK magazine or newspaper UK newsstand sales up 13pc. Growing popularity of digital/print bundle Last year, we revealed that The Spectator had broken its previous circulation record and was selling more copies than at any time in its 189-year history. That momentum has kept building and the figures we release today are nothing short of extraordinary: print subscriptions are up 9pc year-on-year. Print circulation is now rising at the fastest rate since 1989. To have sales at a record high is one thing: to have print circulation growing at the fastest rate for almost 30 years is quite another. There are several measures of magazine circulation: print, digital, overseas etc.

The UK magazine industry publishes its circulation figures today, and there is good news for The Spectator: the highest sales ever in our long and illustrious 188-year history. Our web traffic has hit an all time high: we broke 4m monthly unique users during the referendum campaign, which is quite something for a 'paywalled' publication. But traffic comes and goes. What matters is whether the new readers like what they see and, when they encounter the paywall, decide to join us. They are now doing so in record numbers. As a result our subscriptions are soaring. Our print sales figure now stands at 56,632 for the first half of this year - with digital-only sales, it rises to 64,612. This is a record high. The Spectator’s growth is being driven by print and digital.