Cecil Harmsworth King (20 February 1901 – 17 April 1987) was Chairman of Daily Mirror Newspapers, Sunday Pictorial Newspapers and the

International Publishing Corporation TI Media (formerly International Publishing Company, IPC Magazines Ltd, IPC Media and Time Inc. UK) was a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year. Most of its tit ...

(1963–1968), and a director at the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

(1965–1968).

Biography

Early life

Cecil Harmsworth King was born on 20 February 1901 at Poynters Hall,

Totteridge Totteridge is a residential area and former village in the London Borough of Barnet, England. It is a mixture of suburban development and open land (including some farmland) situated 8 miles (13 km) north north-west of Charing Cross. It ...

, Hertfordshire, the home of his grandmother, Geraldine Mary Harmsworth. He came on his father's side from a Protestant Irish family, and was brought up in Ireland. His father was Sir

Lucas White King Sir Lucas White King (8 September 1856 – 23 August 1925) was an Anglo-Irish colonial administrator and academic, Professor of Oriental Languages at Trinity College, Dublin from 1905 to 1922. Early life He was born in Madras, British India on ...

, Professor of Oriental Languages at

Trinity College, Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, and his mother was Geraldine Adelaide Hamilton (''née'' Harmsworth), daughter of Alfred Harmsworth, a barrister, and sister of the mass-circulation newspaper proprietors

Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. As owner of the ''Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Mirror'', he was an early developer of popular journal ...

and

Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, (26 April 1868 – 26 November 1940) was a leading British newspaper proprietor who owned Associated Newspapers Ltd. He is best known, like his brother Alfred Harmsworth, later Viscount Northcl ...

. The fourth child in a family of three sons and three daughters, he was educated at

Winchester College Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the ...

and

Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniqu ...

. According to

Geoffrey Goodman Geoffrey George Goodman (2 July 1922 – 5 September 2013Mike Molloy"Obituary: Geoffrey Goodman" theguardian.com, 6 September 2013.) was a British journalist, broadcaster and writer. Following periods on the ''News Chronicle'' and the '' Daily He ...

: "He believed he was born to rule, an image of himself which never departed."

Career

In 1937, he was an advertising director of one of his uncle's newspapers when he formed a partnership with journalist

Hugh Cudlipp Hubert Kinsman Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp, OBE (28 August 1913 – 17 May 1998), was a Welsh journalist and newspaper editor noted for his work on the ''Daily Mirror'' in the 1950s and 1960s. He served as chairman of the Mirror Group group o ...

. When he was made a senior director, he chose Cudlipp as his new editor. At the age of 23, Cudlipp became the youngest chief editor in

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...

. Between them, both men turned the ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print ...

'' into the world's largest selling daily paper. In 1967, the ''Daily Mirror'' reached a world record circulation of 5,282,137 copies. By 1963 King was chairman of the

(IPC), then the biggest publishing empire in the world, which included the ''Daily Mirror'' and some two hundred other papers and magazines (1963–1968). His influence in British public life was enormous. He himself believed that criticism of

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...

's government by the ''Mirror'' had caused that government's collapse after the war. King was involved in, and may have instigated, a 1968 meeting with

Louis Mountbatten Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (25 June 1900 – 27 August 1979) was a British naval officer, colonial administrator and close relative of the British royal family. Mountbatten, who was of German ...

, among others, in which he proposed that

Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...

's government be overthrown and replaced with a temporary administration headed by Mountbatten. He decided to override the editorial independence of the ''Mirror'' and wrote and instructed to be published a front-page article calling on Wilson to be removed by some sort of extra-parliamentary action. The board of IPC met and demanded his resignation for this breach of procedure and for damaging the interests of IPC as a public company. He refused, and was dismissed by the board on 30 May, leaving command to his deputy,

, who later expanded IPC's business in the United States.

Personal life and death

He married firstly Agnes Margaret Cooke, daughter of Canon George Albert Cooke and Frances Helen Anderson, in 1923. They had four children: Michael, Francis, Priscilla and Colin. He and Agnes Margaret Cooke were divorced. He married secondly

Ruth Railton Dame Ruth Railton (14 December 1915 – 23 February 2001) was a British music director and conductor. After St. Mary's School, Wantage, and the Royal Academy of Music, she became director of music or choral work for several schools includi ...

in 1962, founder of the

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYO-GB) is the national youth orchestra of the United Kingdom, consisting of 164 members of ages 13 to 19 years. Their mission is to "give thrilling experiences of orchestral music to teenage musici ...

, daughter of Rev David Railton and Ruby Marion Wilson.Beavan, 2004. In 1974, King moved from London to Dublin with his second wife. He died at his Dublin home, The Pavilion, 23 Greenfield Park, Donnybrook, following a long illness. He was survived by Dame Ruth as well as two children from his first marriage, his sons Michael and Colin having predeceased him.

Cultural depictions

He appears in

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

's ''

The Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...

'' in episode five of

season 3 A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pola ...

("Coup"), portrayed by actor

Rupert Vansittart Rupert Nicholas Vansittart (born 10 February 1958) is an English character actor. He has appeared in a variety of roles in film, television, stage and radio, often playing comic characters. He is best known for his role as Lord Ashfordly in the ...

References

Primary sources

* King, Cecil Harmsworth. ''The Cecil King Diary, 1965–1970'' (Jonathan Cape, 1972). * King, Cecil Harmsworth. ''The Cecil King Diary, 1970–1974'' (J. Cape, 1975).