Fraser Nelson

It’s the Press Awards tonight and a first for The Spectator – we’re nominated for the first time. James Forsyth is up for political journalist of the year, and he and I are heading to out to the awards now (after taking out a small mortgage for the £250-a-piece tickets) to hope for the best. Since the Press Awards opened to magazines, they’re one of the few awards The Spectator enters (we tend to avoid the the Editorial Intelligence awards, which are judged by corporate lobbyists) so it was great to make tonight’s shortlist. James is up against some pretty tough competition, but that’s true every week – and every week he comes up with the most insightful commentary around.

When James Forsyth set up Coffee House ten years ago, we imagined there being a big difference between blogs and magazine articles. We soon worked out that readers didn’t really distinguish. They read a great article on The Spectator website, and that was that. They’d share, and subscribe to read more. Over the years Coffee House has developed into a live comment section boasting up some of the best names in British journalism: Nick Cohen, Douglas Murray, Isabel Hardman, Brendan O’Neill, Alex Massie, Rod Liddle and more. And, soon, two more. I’m delighted to announce that James Kirkup, of the Daily Telegraph, will be joining Coffee House as a regular columnist. I doubt anyone who visits these pages will need an introduction.

Just before Christmas, Sajid Javid performed a ritual he has observed twice a year throughout his adult life: he read the courtroom scene in The Fountainhead. To Ayn Rand fans, it’s famous: the hero declares his principles and his willingness to be imprisoned for them if need be. As a student, Javid read the passage to his now-wife, but only once — she told him she’d have nothing more to do with him if he tried it again. ‘It’s about the power of the individual,’ he says. ‘About sticking up for your beliefs, against popular opinion. Being that individual that really believes in something and goes for it.

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.

We’re looking for interns to spend a week or two with us here at The Spectator. We tend to get over a hundred applications for about a dozen places, and take the process seriously. Several of our recruits (Camilla Swift, Alex Massie, Sebastian Payne) first came through our doors as interns: when we have a vacancy, we normally ask back the best intern of the year. We take an unusual approach in that we don't want to see your CV. We don't want to know where, or even whether, you went to university. Frank Johnson was a superb editor of this magazine and he left school aged 16. The only thing that matters in journalism is flair, imagination, work ethic and enthusiasm: skills that you can’t really learn in any classroom.

Matthew Parris’s article about the madness of the Brexiteers has caused much interest on social media, as did Alex Massie’s article along the same lines on Friday. I’ve been amused to see this described by some as a evidence of mutiny on HMS Brexit. A magazine’s star writers attacking each other with some passion, and sparing no weapon in the process. What’s going on? Simple: the same thing that has been going on since The Spectator was first published 189 years ago. We have no party line on Brexit, or anything else.

On the wall behind my desk hangs a picture of Alexander Chancellor when he was editing The Spectator, with cigarette and telephone in one hand and looking very much the hero that all of us in the magazine have long regarded him. His death, announced earlier on this morning, is awful news: we have lost not just a columnist but the godfather of the magazine. Some editors improve their publications, others aren’t so lucky - but Alexander saved The Spectator. The magazine as we know it today – its tone, its mix, its success – is his. Before he took over, sales were tanking. We were the only publication to support Brexit in the 1975 referendum (other than the Morning Star); an admirable position but one that had become something of an obsession.

The early departure of Robert Hannigan as GCHQ chief, announced today, marks not so much the end of an era as the transition between eras. The agency's famous HQ in Cheltenham, a metallic doughnut the size of Wembley Stadium, might look futuristic but was designed in the late 1990s before anyone worked out just how much data the intelligence services would have to intercept and analyse. Or how much of espionage would involve codebreaking, and on such an unprecedented scale. The workload exploded as it opened in 2003 and suddenly a GCHQ designed for 5,000 staff looked too small. New ways of working were needed. Hannigan was brought in, as outsiders occasionally are to GCHQ, to administer some course correction.