I picked up The Outsiders, a biography of the Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere, the former being the founder of the Daily Maul, in a second-hand bookshop while on holiday a few years ago and have only just got round to starting it.
Whatever one thinks of the current rag, it's hard not to admire Alfred Harmsworth's drive and far-sightedness in the way that he set up and ran the paper (plus later ventures such as the Daily Mirror), with ideas that are now taken for granted but were innovative at the time.
So far, possibly the most amusing fact, though - given the rag's antipathy towards us today - is that Harmsworth was an obsessive cyclists, who once raced from London to Bournemouth on a penny farthing and began his career editing a bicycling magazine.
I haven't got to the part where he dies and Rothermere takes over, but his descendants appear to be a much less likeable bunch.
