The Sunday Times

History

Founding and early history (1821–1915)

The paper began publication on 18 February 1821 as The New Observer, but from 21 April its title was changed to the Independent Observer. Its founder, Henry White, chose the name apparently in an attempt to take advantage of the success of The Observer, which had been founded in 1791, although there was no connection between the two papers. On 20 October 1822 it was reborn as The Sunday Times, although it had no relationship with The Times. In January 1823, White sold the paper to Daniel Whittle Harvey, a radical politician.

Under its new owner, The Sunday Times notched up several firsts. A wood engraving it published of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 was the largest illustration to have appeared in a British newspaper. In 1841, it became one of the first papers to serialise a novel: William Harrison Ainsworth's Old St Paul's.

The paper was bought in 1887 by Alice Anne Cornwell, who had made a fortune in mining in Australia and by floating the Midas Mine Company on the London Stock Exchange. She bought the paper to promote her new company, The British and Australasian Mining Investment Company, and as a gift to her lover Phil Robinson. Robinson was installed as editor and the two were later married in 1894.

In 1893 Cornwell sold the paper to Frederick Beer, who already owned The Observer. Beer appointed his wife, Rachel Sassoon Beer, as editor. She was already editor of The Observer – the first woman to run a national newspaper – and continued to edit both titles until 1901.

The Kemsley years (1915–1959)

There was a further change of ownership in 1903, and then in 1915 the paper was bought by William Berry and his brother, Gomer Berry, later ennobled as Lord Camrose and Viscount Kemsley respectively. Under their ownership, The Sunday Times continued its reputation for innovation: on 23 November 1930, it became the first Sunday newspaper to publish a 40-page issue and on 21 January 1940, news replaced advertising on the front page.

In 1943, the Kemsley Newspapers Group was established, with The Sunday Times becoming its flagship paper. At this time, Kemsley was the largest newspaper group in Britain.

On 12 November 1945, Ian Fleming, who later created James Bond, joined the paper as foreign manager (foreign editor) and special writer. The following month, circulation reached 500,000. On 28 September 1958, the paper launched a separate Review section, becoming the first newspaper to publish two sections regularly.

The Thomson years (1959–1981)

The Kemsley group was bought in 1959 by Lord Thomson, and in October 1960 circulation reached one million for the first time. In another first, on 4 February 1962 the editor, Denis Hamilton, launched The Sunday Times Magazine. (At the insistence of newsagents, worried at the impact on sales of standalone magazines, it was initially called the "colour section" and did not take the name The Sunday Times Magazine until 9 August 1964.) The cover of the first issue, titled "A sharp glance at the mood of Britain" featured a full-bleed 11-frame grid of David Bailey photographs of Jean Shrimpton wearing a Mary Quant outfit, surrounding one frame devoted to a John Bulmer action pic of Burnley’s legendary striker Jimmy McIlroy.

The magazine got off to a slow start, but the advertising soon began to pick up, and, over time, other newspapers launched magazines of their own. English writer Jilly Cooper got her first break in journalism, writing a column on young married life from 1968, leading to her first book How to Stay Married and a 2020 collection, Between the Covers.

Harold Evans, editor from 1967 until 1981, established The Sunday Times as a leading campaigning and investigative newspaper. On 19 May 1968, the paper published its first major campaigning report on the drug thalidomide, which had been reported by the Australian doctor William McBride in The Lancet in 1961 as being associated with birth defects, and been quickly withdrawn. The newspaper published a four-page Insight investigation, titled "The Thalidomide File", in the "Weekly Review" section. On 17 November 1972, the Queen's Bench Divisional Court issued an injunction to prevent The Sunday Times from publishing further articles, as it was feared that the paper's campaign might affect ongoing lawsuits over the ensuing scandal. The newspaper appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which found that the injunction violated the publisher's right to freedom of expression, noting that the articles were moderate and balanced and thus unlikely to disrupt proceedings.

The Murdoch years (1981–present)

Rupert Murdoch's News International acquired the group in February 1981. Murdoch, an Australian who in 1985 became a naturalised American citizen, already owned The Sun and the News of the World, but the Conservative government decided not to refer the deal to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, citing a clause in the Fair Trading Act that exempted uneconomic businesses from referral. The Thomson Corporation had threatened to close the papers down if they were not taken over by someone else within an allotted time, and it was feared that any legal delay to Murdoch's takeover might lead to the two titles' demise. In return, Murdoch provided legally binding guarantees to preserve the titles' editorial independence.

Evans was appointed editor of The Times in February 1981 and was replaced at The Sunday Times by Frank Giles. In 1983, the newspaper bought the serialisation rights to publish the faked Hitler Diaries, thinking them to be genuine after they were authenticated by the own newspaper's own independent director, Hugh Trevor-Roper, the historian and author of The Last Days of Hitler.

Under Andrew Neil, editor from 1983 until 1994, The Sunday Times took a strongly Thatcherite slant that contrasted with the traditional paternalistic conservatism expounded by Peregrine Worsthorne at the rival Sunday Telegraph. It also built on its reputation for investigations. Its scoops included the revelation in 1986 that Israel had manufactured more than 100 nuclear warheads and the publication in 1992 of extracts from Andrew Morton's book, Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words.

In January 1986, after the announcement of a strike by print workers, production of The Sunday Times, along with other newspapers in the group, was shifted to a new plant in Wapping, and the strikers were dismissed. The plant, which allowed journalists to input copy directly, was activated with the help of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). The print unions posted pickets and organised demonstrations outside the new plant to try to dissuade journalists and others from working there, in what became known as the Wapping dispute. The demonstrations sometimes turned violent. The protest ended in failure in February 1987.

During Neil's time as editor, The Sunday Times backed a campaign to prove that HIV was not a cause of AIDS. In 1990, The Sunday Times serialised a book by an American conservative who rejected the scientific consensus on the causes of AIDS and argued that AIDS could not spread to heterosexuals. Articles and editorials in The Sunday Times cast doubt on the scientific consensus, described HIV as a "politically correct virus" about which there was a "conspiracy of silence", disputed that AIDS was spreading in Africa, claimed that tests for HIV were invalid, described the HIV/AIDS treatment drug AZT as harmful, and characterised the WHO as an "Empire-building AIDS [organisation]". The pseudoscientific coverage of HIV/AIDS in The Sunday Times led the scientific journal Nature to monitor the newspaper's coverage and to publish letters rebutting Sunday Times articles which The Sunday Times refused to publish. In response to this, The Sunday Times published an article headlined "AIDS – why we won't be silenced", which claimed that Nature engaged in censorship and "sinister intent". In his 1996 book, Full Disclosure, Neil wrote that the HIV/AIDS denialism "deserved publication to encourage debate". That same year, he wrote that The Sunday Times had been vindicated in its coverage, "The Sunday Times was one of a handful of newspapers, perhaps the most prominent, which argued that heterosexual Aids was a myth. The figures are now in and this newspaper stands totally vindicated ... The history of Aids is one of the great scandals of our time. I do not blame doctors and the Aids lobby for warning that everybody might be at risk in the early days, when ignorance was rife and reliable evidence scant." He criticised the "AIDS establishment" and said "Aids had become an industry, a job-creation scheme for the caring classes."

Circulation

In March 2020, The Sunday Times had a circulation of 647,622, exceeding that of its main rivals, The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer, combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, The Sunday Times retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it intends to continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sold 75% more copies than its sister paper, The Times, which is published from Monday to Saturday.

Election endorsements

The paper endorsed the Conservative Party in the 2005, 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 UK general elections, before endorsing the Labour Party in the 2024 election.

Online presence

The online presences of The Sunday Times and The Times have been repeatedly combined and separated over the years.

Prior to 2001, distinct websites thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk existed. In 2001, these were combined into Times Online.

In 2010, Times Online was replaced with distinct websites again for The Sunday Times and The Times.

In 2016, The Times and The Sunday Times' websites were once again merged into one.

In 2024, the domain name was changed from "thetimes.co.uk" to "thetimes.com".

An iPad edition was launched in December 2010, and an Android version in August 2011. Since July 2012, the digital version of the paper has been available on Apple's Newsstand platform, allowing automated downloading of the news section. With over 500 MB of content every week, it is the biggest newspaper app in the world.

The Sunday Times iPad app was named newspaper app of the year at the 2011 Newspaper Awards and has twice been ranked best newspaper or magazine app in the world by iMonitor. Various subscription packages exist, giving access to both the print and digital versions of the paper.

On 2 October 2012, The Sunday Times launched Sunday Times Driving, a separate classified advertising site for premium vehicles that also includes editorial content from the newspaper as well as specially commissioned articles. It can be accessed without cost.

Related publications

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

This 164-page monthly magazine was sold separately from the newspaper and was Britain's best-selling travel magazine. The first issue of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine was in 2003, and it included news, features and insider guides.

Notable stories

Some of the more notable or controversial stories published in The Sunday Times include:

Thalidomide, a drug prescribed to pregnant women to treat morning sickness, was withdrawn in 1961 following reports that it was linked to a number of birth defects. The Sunday Times spent many years campaigning for compensation for the victims, providing case studies and evidence of the side-effects. In 1968, the Distillers Company agreed to a multimillion-pound compensation scheme for the victims.

The paper sponsored Francis Chichester's single-handed circumnavigation of the world under sail in 1966–67, and the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in 1968–69.

The Insight team ran an investigation into Kim Philby, the Soviet double agent, that ran on 1 October 1967 under the headline "Philby: I spied for Russia from 1933".

Insight carried out a major investigation in 1972 into Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland.

The newspaper published the faked Hitler Diaries (1983), believing them to be genuine after they were authenticated by historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Israeli nuclear weapons: using information from Mordechai Vanunu, The Sunday Times in 1986 revealed that Israel had manufactured more than 100 nuclear warheads.

On 12 July 1987 The Sunday Times began serialisation of the book Spycatcher, the memoirs of an MI5 agent, which had been banned in Britain. The paper successfully challenged subsequent legal action by the British government, winning its case at the European Court of Human Rights in 1991.

The paper ran a story claiming Queen Elizabeth II, who generally maintains a strictly impartial role politically, was upset with the style of Margaret Thatcher's leadership.

Controversies

Phone hacking scandal

In July 2011, The Sunday Times was implicated in the wider News International phone hacking scandal, which primarily involved the News of the World, a Murdoch tabloid newspaper published in the UK from 1843 to 2011. Former British prime minister Gordon Brown accused The Sunday Times of employing "known criminals" to impersonate him and obtain his private financial records. Brown's bank reported that an investigator employed by The Sunday Times repeatedly impersonated Brown to gain access to his bank account records. The Sunday Times vigorously denied these accusations and said that the story was in the public interest and that it had followed the Press Complaints Commission code on using subterfuge.

Errors

Over two years in the early 1990s, The Sunday Times published a series of articles rejecting the role of HIV in causing AIDS, calling the African AIDS epidemic a myth. In response, the scientific journal Nature described the paper's coverage of HIV/AIDS as "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous". Nature argued that the newspaper had "so consistently misrepresented the role of HIV in the causation of AIDS that Nature plans to monitor its future treatment of the issue."

In January 2010, The Sunday Times published an article by Jonathan Leake, alleging that a figure in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was based on an "unsubstantiated claim". The story attracted worldwide attention. However, a scientist quoted in the same article later stated that the newspaper story was wrong and that quotes of him had been used in a misleading way. Following an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, The Sunday Times retracted the story and apologised.

In September 2012, Jonathan Leake published an article in The Sunday Times under the headline "Only 100 adult cod in North Sea". This figure was later shown by a BBC article to be wildly incorrect. The newspaper published a correction, apologising for an over simplification in the headline, which had referred to a fall in the number of fully mature cod over the age of 13, thereby indicating this is the breeding age of cod. In fact, as the newspaper subsequently pointed out, cod can start breeding between the ages of four and six, in which case there are many more mature cod in the North Sea.

Allegations of antisemitism

In 1992, the paper agreed to pay David Irving, an author widely criticised for Holocaust denial, the sum of £75,000 to authenticate the Goebbels diaries and edit them for serialisation. The deal was quickly cancelled after drawing strong international criticism.

In January 2013, The Sunday Times published a Gerald Scarfe caricature depicting Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cementing a wall with blood and Palestinians trapped between the bricks. The cartoon sparked an outcry in Israel, compounded by the fact that its publication coincided with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and was condemned by the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League. After Rupert Murdoch tweeted that he considered it a "grotesque, offensive cartoon" and that Scarfe had "never reflected the opinions of The Sunday Times" the newspaper issued an apology. Journalist Ian Burrell, writing in The Independent, described the apology as an "indication of the power of the Israel lobby in challenging critical media coverage of its politicians" and one that questions Rupert Murdoch's assertion that he does not "interfere in the editorial content of his papers".

In July 2017, Kevin Myers wrote a column in The Sunday Times saying "I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them". He continued "Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they're the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace". After the column The Sunday Times fired Myers. The Campaign Against Antisemitism criticised The Sunday Times for allowing Myers to write the column despite his past comments about Jews.

Other editions

Irish edition

The Republic of Ireland edition of The Sunday Times was launched on a small scale in 1993 with just two staff: Alan Ruddock and John Burns (who started as financial correspondent for the newspaper and is at present acting associate editor). It used the slogan "The English just don't get it". As of 2012 it is the third biggest-selling newspaper in Ireland measured in terms of full-price cover sales. Circulation had grown steadily to over 127,000 in the two decades before 2012, but has declined since and in 2018 stood at 60,352 (January to June 2018).

The paper is heavily editionalised, with extensive Irish coverage of politics, general news, business, personal finance, sport, culture and lifestyle. The office employs 25 people. The paper also has a number of well-known freelance columnists including Brenda Power, Liam Fay, Matt Cooper, Damien Kiberd, Jill Kerby and Stephen Price. However, it ended collaboration with Kevin Myers after he had published a controversial column. The Irish edition has had four editors since it was set up: Alan Ruddock from 1993 until 1996, Rory Godson from 1996 until 2000, Fiona McHugh from 2000 to 2005, and from 2005 until 2020 Frank Fitzgibbon.

Scottish edition

For more than 20 years the paper has published a separate Scottish edition, which has been edited since January 2012 by Jason Allardyce. While most of the articles that run in the English edition appear in the Scottish edition, its staff also produces about a dozen Scottish news stories, including a front-page article, most weeks.