The Guardian

History

1821 to 1972

The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle, a group of non-conformist businessmen. They launched the paper, on 5 May 1821 (by chance the very day of Napoleon's death) after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo massacre protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing: "They have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they live better than those that do." When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.

The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, and all of the Little Circle wrote articles for the new paper. The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures". In 1825, the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828.

The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called The Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners". The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill, the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators, stating that "if an accommodation can be effected, the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife ... ."

In March 2023, an academic review commissioned by the Scott Trust determined that John Edward Taylor and nine of his eleven backers had links to the Atlantic slave trade through their interests in Manchester's textile industry.

The newspaper opposed slavery and supported free trade. An 1823 leading article on the continuing "cruelty and injustice" to slaves in the West Indies long after the abolition of the slave trade with the Slave Trade Act 1807 wanted fairness to the interests and claims both of the planters and of their oppressed slaves. It welcomed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and accepted the "increased compensation" to the planters as the "guilt of slavery attaches far more to the nation" rather than individuals. Success of the Act would encourage emancipation in other slave-owning nations to avoid "imminent risk of a violent and bloody termination". However, the newspaper argued against restricting trade with countries that had not yet abolished slavery.

1972 to 2000

During the early period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, The Guardian supported British state intervention to quell disturbances between Irish Catholics and Ulster loyalists. After the 1969 Battle of the Bogside between Catholic residents of Derry and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), The Guardian called for the British Armed Forces to be deployed to the region, arguing that their deployment would "present a more disinterested face of law and order" than the RUC. The Army was deployed from 1969.

On 30 January 1972, troops from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment opened fire on a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march, killing fourteen people in an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. In response to the incident, The Guardian argued that "Neither side can escape condemnation... The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." The Guardian further stated that "It is certainly true that the army cordons had endured a wanton barrage of stones, steel bars, and other missiles. That still does not justify opening fire so freely."

After the events of Bloody Sunday, John Widgery, Baron Widgery was appointed the head of a tribunal to investigate the killings. The resulting tribunal, known as the Widgery Tribunal, largely exonerated the actions of the soldiers involved in the incident. The Guardian published an article on 20 April 1972 which supported the tribunal and its findings, arguing that "Widgery's report is not one-sided". In response to the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland, The Guardian argued that "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable... To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down, is a step to which there is no obvious alternative."

In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missiles in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civil servant Sarah Tisdall. The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which led to a six-month prison sentence for Tisdall. "I still blame myself", said Peter Preston, who was the editor of The Guardian at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law". In a 2019 article discussing Julian Assange and the protection of sources by journalists, John Pilger criticised the editor of The Guardian for betraying Tisdall by choosing not to go to prison "on a fundamental principle of protecting a source".

Since 2000

In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848. In October 2004, The Guardian published a humorous column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, the final sentence of which was viewed by some as a call for violence against US President George W. Bush; after a controversy, Brooker and the paper issued an apology, saying the "closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action".

Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam, a 27-year-old British Muslim and journalism trainee from Yorkshire. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the newspaper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper. The Home Office said that the group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". The Guardian asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group and, when he did not do so, terminated his employment.

In early 2009, The Guardian started a tax investigation into a number of major UK companies, including publishing a database of the tax paid by the FTSE 100 companies. Internal documents relating to Barclays Bank's tax avoidance were removed from The Guardian website after Barclays obtained a gagging order. The newspaper played a pivotal role in exposing the depth of the News of the World phone hacking affair. The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine opined that:

As Watergate is to [The] Washington Post, and thalidomide to [The] Sunday Times, so phone-hacking will surely be to The Guardian: a defining moment in its history.

In recent decades, The Guardian has been accused of biased criticism of Israeli government policy and of bias against the Palestinians. In December 2003, columnist Julie Burchill cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times.

Responding to these accusations, a Guardian editorial in 2002 condemned antisemitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, then The Guardian's foreign editor and later its Jerusalem correspondent, has also denied that The Guardian has an anti-Israel bias, saying that the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Publication of official history

Two volumes of the official history of The Guardian have so far been published, researched and written by Ian Mayes.

Witness in a Time of Turmoil: Inside the Guardian's Global Revolution, Volume 1, 1986–1995 was published in May 2025, when historian Joe Moran stated in a review: "Covering nine years in more than 300 pages, this book has all the comprehensiveness of an official history. ...But Mayes enlivens his narrative throughout with humorous touches and compelling character sketches." The second volume, Witness in a Time of Trial: Inside the Guardian's Global Revolution Volume Two: 1995–2009, was published in January 2026.

Ownership and finances

The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group (GMG) of newspapers, radio stations and print media. GMG components include The Guardian Weekly and TheGuardian.com. All were owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to takeovers by commercial media groups. At the beginning of October 2008, the Scott Trust's assets were transferred to a new limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up. Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained the same as under the previous arrangements.

The Guardian is the only British national daily to conduct (since 2003) an annual social, ethical and environmental audit in which it examines, under the scrutiny of an independent external auditor, its own behaviour as a company. It is also the only British national daily newspaper to employ an internal ombudsman (called the "readers' editor") to handle complaints and corrections.

The Guardian and its parent groups participate in Project Syndicate and intervened in 1995 to save the Mail & Guardian in South Africa; GMG sold the majority of its shares of the Mail & Guardian in 2002.

The Guardian was consistently loss-making until 2019. The National Newspaper division of GMG, reported operating losses of £49.9 million in 2006, up from £18.6 million in 2005. The paper was therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group.

The continual losses made by the National Newspaper division of the Guardian Media Group caused it to dispose of its Regional Media division by selling titles to competitor Trinity Mirror in March 2010. This included the flagship Manchester Evening News, and severed the historic link between that paper and The Guardian. The sale was to safeguard the future of The Guardian newspaper as is the intended purpose of the Scott Trust.

In June 2011 Guardian News and Media revealed increased annual losses of £33 million and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving the print edition to contain more comments and features. It was also speculated that The Guardian might become the first British national daily paper to be fully online.

"Membership" subscription scheme

In 2014, The Guardian launched a membership scheme. The scheme aims to reduce the financial losses incurred by The Guardian without introducing a paywall, thus maintaining open access to the website. Website readers can pay a monthly subscription, with three tiers available. As of 2018 this approach was considered successful, having brought more than 1 million subscriptions or donations, with the paper hoping to break even by April 2019.

Foundation funding

In 2016, the company established a US-based philanthropic arm to raise money from individuals and organisations including think tanks and corporate foundations. The grants are focused by the donors on particular issues. By the following year, the organisation had raised $1 million from the likes of Pierre Omidyar's Humanity United, the Skoll Foundation, and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to finance reporting on topics including modern-day slavery and climate change. The Guardian has stated that it has secured $6 million "in multi-year funding commitments" thus far.

The new project developed from funding relationships which the paper already had with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates had given the organisation $5 million for its Global Development webpage.

As of March 2020, the journal claims to be "the first major global news organisation to institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels."

Political stance and editorial opinion

Founded by textile traders and merchants, in its early years The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class", or in the words of C. P. Scott's son Ted, "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last". Associated at first with the Little Circle and hence with classical liberalism as expressed by the Whigs and later by the Liberal Party, its political orientation underwent a decisive change after World War II, leading to a gradual alignment with Labour and the political left in general.

The Scott Trust describes one of its "core purposes" to be "to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition". The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80 per cent of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters; according to another MORI poll taken in 2005, 48 per cent of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 34 per cent Liberal Democrat voters. The term "Guardian reader" can be used to imply a stereotype of modern liberal, left-wing or "politically correct" views. In 2022, Suella Braverman blamed disruptive protests on the "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati".

Although the paper is often considered to be "linked inextricably" to the Labour Party, three of The Guardian's four leader writers joined the more centrist Social Democratic Party on its foundation in 1981. The paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his successful bid to lead the Labour Party, and to be elected Prime Minister. On 19 January 2003, two months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an Observer Editorial said: "Military intervention in the Middle East holds many dangers. But if we want a lasting peace it may be the only option. ... War with Iraq may yet not come, but, conscious of the potentially terrifying responsibility resting with the British Government, we find ourselves supporting the current commitment to a possible use of force." The Guardian, however, opposed the war, along with the Daily Mirror and The Independent.

Then Guardian features editor Ian Katz asserted in 2004 that "it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper". In 2008, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley said that editorial contributors were a mix of "right-of-centre libertarians, greens, Blairites, Brownites, Labourite but less enthusiastic Brownites, etc.", and that the newspaper was "clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive". She also said that "you can be absolutely certain that come the next general election, The Guardian's stance will not be dictated by the editor, still less any foreign proprietor (it helps that there isn't one) but will be the result of vigorous debate within the paper". The paper's comment and opinion pages, though often written by centre-left contributors such as Polly Toynbee, have allowed some space for right-of-centre voices such as Sir Max Hastings and Michael Gove. Since an editorial in 2000, The Guardian has favoured abolition of the British monarchy. "I write for the Guardian," said Max Hastings in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment," reflecting the paper's then-growing influence.

Circulation and format

Circulation grew rapidly in the early years. It was 4,700 in 1837 and had grown to 10,300 by 1854.

The Guardian had a certified average daily circulation of 204,222 copies in December 2012 — a drop of 11.25 per cent in January 2012 — as compared to sales of 547,465 for The Daily Telegraph, 396,041 for The Times, and 78,082 for The Independent. In March 2013, its average daily circulation had fallen to 193,586, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Circulation has continued to decline and stood at 161,091 in December 2016, a decline of 2.98 per cent year-on-year. In July 2021, the circulation was 105,134; later that year, the publishers stopped making circulation data public.

Publication history

The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, at which time The Guardian was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7d; the stamp duty on newspapers (4d per sheet) forced the price up so high that it was uneconomic to publish more frequently. When the stamp duty was cut in 1836, The Guardian added a Wednesday edition and with the abolition of the tax in 1855 it became a daily paper costing 2d.

In October 1952, the paper took the step of printing news on the front page, replacing the adverts that had hitherto filled that space. Then-editor A. P. Wadsworth wrote: "It is not a thing I like myself, but it seems to be accepted by all the newspaper pundits that it is preferable to be in fashion."

Following the closure of the Anglican Church Newspaper, The Guardian, in 1951, the paper dropped "Manchester" from its title in 1959, becoming simply The Guardian. In 1964 it moved to London, losing some of its regional agenda but continuing to be heavily subsidised by sales of the more downmarket but more profitable Manchester Evening News. The financial position remained extremely poor into the 1970s; at one time it was in merger talks with The Times. The paper consolidated its centre-left stance during the 1970s and 1980s.

On 12 February 1988, The Guardian had a significant redesign; as well as improving the quality of its printers' ink, it also changed its masthead to a juxtaposition of an italic Garamond "The", with a bold Helvetica "Guardian", that remained in use until the 2005 redesign.

In 1992, The Guardian relaunched its features section as G2, a tabloid-format supplement. This innovation was widely copied by the other "quality" broadsheets and ultimately led to the rise of "compact" papers and The Guardian's move to the Berliner format. In 1993 the paper declined to participate in the broadsheet price war started by Rupert Murdoch's The Times. In June 1993, The Guardian bought The Observer from Lonrho, thus gaining a serious Sunday sister newspaper with similar political views.

Its international weekly edition is now titled The Guardian Weekly, though it retained the title Manchester Guardian Weekly for some years after the home edition had moved to London. It includes sections from a number of other internationally significant newspapers of a somewhat left-of-centre inclination, including Le Monde and The Washington Post. The Guardian Weekly was also linked to a website for expatriates, Guardian Abroad, which was launched in 2007 but had been taken offline by 2012.

Moving to the Berliner paper format

The Guardian is printed in full colour, and was the first newspaper in the UK to use the Berliner format for its main section, while producing sections and supplements in a range of page sizes including tabloid, approximately A4, and pocket-size (approximately A5).

In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a Berliner or "midi" format, similar to that used by Die Tageszeitung in Germany, Le Monde in France and many other European papers. At 470×315 mm, this is slightly larger than a traditional tabloid. Planned for the autumn of 2005, this change followed moves by The Independent and The Times to start publishing in tabloid (or compact) format. On Thursday, 1 September 2005, The Guardian announced that it would launch the new format on Monday 12 September 2005. Sister Sunday newspaper The Observer also changed to this new format on 8 January 2006.

The format switch was accompanied by a comprehensive redesign of the paper's look. On Friday, 9 September 2005, the newspaper unveiled its newly designed front page, which débuted on Monday 12 September 2005. Designed by Mark Porter, the new look includes a new masthead for the newspaper, its first since 1988. A typeface family designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz was created for the new design. With just over 200 fonts, it was described as "one of the most ambitious custom type programs ever commissioned by a newspaper". Among the fonts is Guardian Egyptian, a slab serif that is used in various weights for both text and headlines, and is central to the redesign.

The switch cost Guardian Newspapers £80 million and involved setting up new printing presses in east London and Manchester. This switch was necessary because, before The Guardian's move, no printing presses in Britain could produce newspapers in the Berliner format. There were additional complications, as one of the paper's presses was part-owned by Telegraph Newspapers and Express Newspapers, contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the Guardian Media Group's north-western tabloid local papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.

The new format was generally well received by Guardian readers, who were encouraged to provide feedback on the changes. The only controversy was over the dropping of the Doonesbury cartoon strip. The paper reported thousands of calls and emails complaining about its loss; within 24 hours the decision was reversed and the strip was reinstated the following week. G2 supplement editor Ian Katz, who was responsible for dropping it, apologised in the editors' blog saying, "I'm sorry, once again, that I made you—and the hundreds of fellow fans who have called our helpline or mailed our comments' address—so cross." However, some readers were dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section meant coverage of late-finishing evening football matches became less satisfactory in the editions supplied to some parts of the country.

Tabloid format since 2018

In June 2017, Guardian Media Group (GMG) announced that The Guardian and The Observer would relaunch in tabloid format from early 2018. The Guardian confirmed the launch date for the new format to be 15 January 2018. GMG also signed a contract with Trinity Mirror – the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People – to outsource printing of The Guardian and The Observer.

The format change was intended to help cut costs as it allowed the paper to be printed by a wider array of presses, and outsourcing the printing to presses owned by Trinity Mirror was expected to save millions of pounds annually. The move was part of a three-year plan that included cutting 300 jobs in an attempt to reduce losses and break even by 2019. The paper and ink are the same as previously and the font size is fractionally larger.

An assessment of the response from readers in late April 2018 indicated that the new format had led to an increased number of subscriptions. The editors were working on changing aspects that had caused complaints from readers.

In July 2018, the masthead of the new tabloid format was adjusted to a dark blue.

Online media

The Guardian and its former Sunday sibling The Observer publish all their news online, with free access both to current news and an archive of three million stories. A third of the site's hits are for items over a month old. As of May 2013, it was the most popular UK newspaper website with 8.2 million unique visitors per month, just ahead of Mail Online with 7.6 million unique monthly visitors. In April 2011, MediaWeek reported that The Guardian was the fifth most popular newspaper site in the world. Journalists use an analytics tool called Ophan, built entirely in-house, to measure website data around stories and audience. However, the number of online readers had drastically dropped by July 2021.

The Guardian launched an iOS mobile application for its content in 2009. An Android app followed in 2011. In 2018, the newspaper's apps and mobile website were redesigned to coincide with its relaunch in tabloid format.

The Comment is Free section includes columns by the paper's journalists and regular commentators, articles from guest writers, and readers' comments and responses to articles. The section includes all the opinion pieces published in the paper itself and many others that only appear online. Censorship is exercised by moderators who can ban – with no right of appeal –posts that they feel have overstepped the mark. The Guardian has taken what they call a very "open" stance in delivering news, and have launched an open platform for their content. This allows external developers to easily use Guardian content in external applications, and even to feed third-party content back into the Guardian network. The Guardian also had a number of talkboards that were noted for their mix of political discussion and whimsy until they were closed on 25 February 2011 after settlement of a libel action brought after months of harassment of a Conservative Party activist. They were spoofed in The Guardian's own regular humorous Chatroom column in G2. The spoof column purported to be excerpts from a chatroom on permachat.co.uk, a real URL that pointed to The Guardian's talkboards.

In August 2013, a webshow titled Thinkfluencer was launched by Guardian Multimedia in association with Arte.

In 2004 the paper also launched a dating website, Guardian Soulmates. On 1 July 2020, Guardian Soulmates was closed down with the explanation: "The online dating world is a very different place to when we first launched online in July 2004. There are so many dating apps now, so many ways to meet people, which are often free and very quick."

Podcasts

The paper entered podcasting in 2005 with a twelve-part weekly podcast series by Ricky Gervais. In January 2006, Gervais' show topped the iTunes podcast chart, having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide, and was scheduled to be listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded podcast.

The Guardian offers several regular podcasts made by its journalists. One of the most prominent is Today in Focus, a daily news podcast hosted by Anushka Asthana launched on 1 November 2018. It was an immediate success and became one of the UK's most-downloaded podcasts.

GuardianFilms

In 2003 The Guardian started the film production company GuardianFilms, headed by journalist Maggie O'Kane. Much of the company's output is documentary made for television – and it has included Salam Pax's Baghdad Blogger for BBC Two's daily flagship Newsnight, some of which have been shown in compilations by CNN International, Sex on the Streets and Spiked, both made for the UK's Channel 4 television.

GuardianFilms has received several broadcasting awards. In addition to two Amnesty International Media Awards in 2004 and 2005, The Baghdad Blogger: Salam Pax won a Royal Television Society Award in 2005. Baghdad: A Doctor's Story won an Emmy Award for Best International Current Affairs film in 2007. In 2008 photojournalist Sean Smith's Inside the Surge won the Royal Television Society award for best international news film – the first time a newspaper has won such an award. The same year, The Guardian's Katine website was awarded for its outstanding new media output at the One World Media awards. Again in 2008, GuardianFilms' undercover video report revealing vote rigging by Robert Mugabe's ZANU–PF party during the 2007 Zimbabwe election won best news programme of the year at the Broadcast Awards.

References in popular culture

The paper's nickname The Grauniad (sometimes abbreviated as "Graun") originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. This anagram played on The Guardian's early reputation for frequent typographical errors, including misspelling its own name as The Gaurdian.

The first issue of the newspaper contained a number of errors, including a notification that there would soon be some goods sold at atction instead of auction. Fewer typographical errors are seen in the paper since the end of hot-metal typesetting. One Guardian writer, Keith Devlin, suggested that the high number of observed misprints was due more to the quality of the readership than the misprints' greater frequency. The newspaper was printed in Manchester until 1961 and the fact that the prints sent to London by train were the early, more error-prone, prints may have contributed to this image as well. When John Cole was appointed news editor by Alastair Hetherington in 1963, he sharpened the paper's comparatively "amateurish" setup.

Employees of The Guardian or The Observer have been depicted in the films The Fifth Estate (2013), Snowden (2016) and Official Secrets (2019), while Paddy Considine played a fictional Guardian journalist in the film The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Keira Knightley played a fictional Guardian journalist in the film The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025).

The term "Guardian reader" is sometimes used to describe a person with progressive, left-wing or "politically correct" views.

Awards

Received

The Guardian was awarded the National Newspaper of the Year award in 1998, 2005, 2010 and 2013 by the British Press Awards, and Front Page of the Year in 2002 ("A declaration of war", 12 September 2001). It was also co-winner of the World's Best-designed Newspaper as awarded by the Society for News Design (2005, 2007, 2013, 2014).

Guardian journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including:

Reporter of the Year (Nick Davies, 2000; Paul Lewis, 2010; Rob Evans & Paul Lewis, 2014);

Foreign Reporter of the Year (James Meek, 2004; Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 2008);

Scoop of the Year (Milly Dowler phone hacked, 2012)

Young Journalist of the Year (Emma Brockes, 2001; Patrick Kingsley, 2013);

Columnist of the Year (Polly Toynbee, 2007; Charlie Brooker, 2009);

Critic of the Year (Marina O'Loughlin, 2015);

Feature Writer of the Year (Emma Brockes, 2002; Tanya Gold, 2009; Amelia Gentleman, 2010);

Cartoonist of the Year (Steve Bell, 2003);

Political Journalist of the Year (Patrick Wintour, 2006; Andrew Sparrow, 2010);

Science & Health Journalist of the Year (Sarah Boseley, 2016);

Business & Finance Journalist of the Year (Ian Griffiths, 2005; Simon Goodley, 2014);

Interviewer of the Year (Decca Aitkenhead, 2008);

Given

The Guardian is the sponsor of two major literary awards: The Guardian First Book Award, established in 1999 as a successor to the Guardian Fiction Award, which had run since 1965, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, founded in 1967. In recent years the newspaper has also sponsored the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye.

The annual Guardian Student Media Awards, founded in 1999, recognise excellence in journalism and design of British university and college student newspapers, magazines and websites.

In memory of Paul Foot, who died in 2004, The Guardian and Private Eye jointly set up the Paul Foot Award, with an annual £10,000 prize fund, for investigative or campaigning journalism.

The newspaper produces The Guardian 100 Best Footballers in the World. Since 2018 it has also co-produced the female equivalent, The 100 Best Female Footballers in the World.

In 2016, The Guardian began awarding an annual Footballer of the Year award, given to a footballer regardless of gender "who has done something truly remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty."

Best books lists

The Guardian's 100 best novels is a list of the best English-language novels as selected by Robert McCrum.

The Guardian's 100 greatest non-fiction book list has come out in 2011 and in 2017, as selected by Robert McCrum.

Notable regular contributors (past and present)

Columnists and journalists:

Cartoonists:

David Austin

Steve Bell

Joe Berger

Berke Breathed

Biff

Peter Clarke

Les Gibbard

John Kent

Jamie Lenman

David Low

Martin Rowson

Posy Simmonds

Garry Trudeau

Satirists:

John Crace

Jeremy Hardy

Armando Iannucci

Terry Jones

Craig Brown as "Bel Littlejohn"

John O'Farrell

Mark Steel

Experts:

Tim Atkin

Matthew Fort

Malcolm Gluck

Tim Hayward

Fiona Beckett

Guardian News and Media archive

The Guardian and its then-sister newspaper The Observer opened The Newsroom, an archive and visitor centre in London, in 2002. The centre preserved and promoted the histories and values of the newspapers through its archive, educational programmes and exhibitions. The Newsroom's activities were all transferred to Kings Place in 2008. Now known as The Guardian News & Media archive, the archive preserves and promotes the histories and values of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers by collecting and making accessible material that provides an accurate and comprehensive history of the papers. The archive holds official records of The Guardian and The Observer, and also seeks to acquire material from individuals who have been associated with the papers. As well as corporate records, the archive holds correspondence, diaries, notebooks, original cartoons and photographs belonging to staff of the papers. This material may be consulted by members of the public by prior appointment. An extensive Manchester Guardian archive also exists at the University of Manchester's John Rylands University Library, and there is a collaboration programme between the two archives. Additionally, the British Library has a large archive of The Manchester Guardian available in its British Library Newspapers collection, in online, hard copy, microform, and CD-ROM formats.

In November 2007, The Guardian and The Observer made their archives available over the internet via DigitalArchive. The current extent of the archives available are 1821 to 2003 for The Guardian and 1791 to 2003 for The Observer:

The Newsroom's other components were also transferred to Kings Place in 2008. The Guardian's Education Centre provides a range of educational programmes for students and adults. The Guardian's exhibition space was also moved to Kings Place, and has a rolling programme of exhibitions that investigate and reflect upon aspects of news and newspapers and the role of journalism. This programme often draws on the archive collections held in the GNM archive.