In praise of Ian Gilmour
In late 1954, the proprietor of these august pages, Sir Angus Watson of Skippers Sardines fame, thought he was selling his magazine to the son of Sir John Gilmour, a Baldwin-era Home Secretary. He was not. It was another Gilmour baronet who, as luck would have it, at the age of twenty-eight became the new owner of The Spectator: Ian Gilmour, born on 8 July a century ago. Under his unusually combined authority as editor and proprietor, the somnolent Spectator of the 1950s became a magazine with bite.
