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Anthony Howard obituary

Former editor of the New Statesman and deputy editor of the Observer, he was one of Britain's foremost political commentators

Anthony Howard, who has died aged 76 following heart surgery, was among the most acute political commentators of his generation, a familiar face and voice on television and radio, and a distinguished editor of the New Statesman. But, in the view of many contemporaries, and perhaps his own, he never quite achieved the heights of which he was capable.

In his writing and broadcasting, as in his editing, he delivered sharp and definite judgments. His assessments of a politician's chances of high office or party leadership were instantaneous and nearly always right. Once Margaret Thatcher resigned, he declared, Michael Heseltine's hopes of becoming Tory leader were finished. Denis Healey, he predicted, would not become Labour leader. The SDP's success would be fleeting, he said. His interest was in politicians, and the political process, not in policy or political philosophy. His books were about people – he wrote biographies of RA Butler, Richard Crossman and, finally, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Basil Hume – and his last full-time job, as obituaries editor of the Times, was one that he requested, and which gave him special pleasure.

From university, where he chaired the Labour Club before being elected (at the second attempt) president of the Oxford Union, he was a firm Labour supporter who in the 1950s was briefly a prospective parliamentary candidate. As a young reporter on the Guardian, he was reprimanded by the then editor, Alastair Hetherington, for turning in copy that "reeked of anti-Tory prejudice". Yet he became respected by and friendly with many Tory politicians – he "helped" Heseltine write his memoirs – and a presenter, reporter and political pundit on BBC news and current affairs programmes.

Howard was the son of an Anglican clergyman, and remained engaged with the Church of England all his life, nearly always attending Sunday services and taking a close interest in the church's elaborate internal politics, both past and present. But he was too instinctively sceptical ever to become devoutly religious, and was probably at heart an agnostic. He was educated at Westminster school and Christ Church, Oxford, and intended to become a barrister, after being called to bar at the Inner Temple in 1956. But he had been features editor of the Oxford students' magazine Isis and, when he began his delayed national service as a second lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, he indulged his passion for writing by keeping a diary of his training, parts of which found their way to a small-circulation magazine.

His battalion was involved in Anthony Eden's ill-fated Suez adventure and Howard recalled that, during the invasion of Egypt, he fired two shots which, he ensured, didn't hit anybody. He made little secret of his opposition to the Suez campaign and, at one stage, his officers feared he might desert. He was threatened with a court martial. When his Suez diary was later published in the New Statesman, in flagrant breach of regulations, a prosecution seemed likely until the War Office decided that it was wiser not to create a martyr.

Success with his diaries led him to switch from law to journalism. He first joined Reynolds News, the Co-op movement's paper, and then, in 1959, the Guardian, with a brief to cover politics outside London, a job that required him to give up political ambitions. In 1961, he moved to the New Statesman as its first weekly political columnist in the modern style, mixing reportage, observation and judicious comment.

In 1965, there came the first significant failure of his career and it was one that rankled. The Sunday Times appointed him Whitehall correspondent, working outside the parliamentary lobby, which Howard regarded as docile and even corrupt, and rooting out true stories of what ministers and civil servants got up to. It was regarded as a groundbreaking innovation, launched with some fanfare in a Sunday Times leader.

Harold Wilson, then prime minister, instructed that "ministers should refuse him any facilities for the fulfilment of his task" and the head of the civil service sent out a similar memo. After what he later described as "the most frustrating and miserable summer", Howard accepted that the job was impossible. He did not, in any case, care for the Sunday Times style of editing which, he complained, turned "the idiosyncratic loaves that reporters delivered into processed bread".

He was rescued by the Observer, which made him Washington correspondent in time for some of the most dramatic episodes of the 20th century, including the Vietnam war and the unravelling of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. These events gave Howard full rein to indulge his taste for political drama and also to begin his broadcasting career, making regular contributions on America to Radio 4's The World at One. He then returned to the New Statesman as assistant editor to the former Labour cabinet minister Crossman. When Crossman's brief, undistinguished editorship ended in 1972, Howard was the natural successor. As an insider, his cause was helped by the staff, who had half the votes on the selection committee, but the majority of the board favoured him, too.

His editorship, lasting six years, was acclaimed – albeit more in retrospect than at the time – as a golden age. He recruited an extraordinary array of young talent, including Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens, Julian Barnes, James Fenton and Patrick Wintour (now the Guardian's political editor). He watched over their later progress with pride and occasional anxiety, always sending handwritten notes to mark a career advancement or an outstanding article. He valued, above all, good, vivid, witty writing – "do me a flashy piece," he would instruct contributors – and he was a meticulous and courteous editor, always phoning to acknowledge delivery of copy and adding an immediate, concise judgment as to its quality.

Unlike many editors, his decisions were quick, even brusque, and, once made, very hard to shift. He could be cold and dismissive to those he judged to be pedestrian. He regarded writing for the New Statesman – –which, he insisted, should be called "the paper", not "the magazine" – as an honour, not to be granted lightly. Neither staff nor contributors were paid well, and it was said that he treated the paper's money, which then, as always, was in short supply, as though it were his own. But his notoriously parsimonious regime did not extend to his personal life, where he was generous to friends, former employees and numerous godchildren.

He took the NS, which he thought had gone astray under Crossman, back to its traditional format, restoring words to the front page. He promised from the start that it would not be the Socialist Worker, but he wanted the paper to be Labour's "candid friend", informed by old-fashioned social democratic values and slightly inclined towards the "soft left". For some tastes, the NS could be too candid; in one memorable leader, it denounced Wilson's conduct as Labour's opposition leader for polluting the very atmosphere of politics.

Howard was addicted to gossip and he took great pleasure in mischief of all sorts, particularly a series of articles by the former NS editor Paul Johnson, detailing his growing disillusion with Labour, the unions and all things socialist. He also enjoyed publishing rightwing mavericks such as Auberon Waugh. Though he made the NS more respected, influential and loved, especially in metropolitan media circles, Howard saw circulation continue its decline from the peaks of the 1950s. He left the NS in 1978 and regarded the magazine for the next 20 years with a somewhat jaundiced eye as it periodically flirted with the extra-parliamentary left, tried Sunday Times-style investigative journalism and let slip, as he saw it, the high standards of prose that were once its hallmark.

After briefly considering a renewed attempt at a political career, he edited the BBC-owned Listener magazine which he tried to turn, with mixed results, into something more than radio talks in print. In 1981, he returned to the Observer as deputy editor, where his achievement was to create a Sunday page so absorbing and elegantly presented that many readers still recall it. It comprised a weekly profile, illustrated by a Mark Boxer caricature, a political column by Alan Watkins and, across the top of the page, an erudite and often unpredictable column by Conor Cruise O'Brien and, later, Neal Ascherson.

He was never a great admirer of the then Observer editor Donald Trelford, whom he thought intellectually lightweight, incomprehensibly obsessed with sport and too often absent. In 1988, he attempted a coup, persuading most of the Observer board that Trelford was ruining the paper and that he, Howard, should succeed. However, the proprietor, then "Tiny" Rowland, backed Trelford and Howard was soon out of a job. His last hope of becoming a national newspaper editor – he had set out, he said, with the ambition of editing the Guardian – was thus frustrated.

By then, however, he was a nationally recognised media and political pundit, appearing regularly on programmes such as Granada's What the Papers Say and Channel 4's Face the Press, and therefore had no difficulty sustaining a healthy freelance career, with weekly columns in the Independent and, later, the Times. He became the elder statesman of political commentators, with a remarkable memory for dates, names and incidents of 30 or more years previously and a knack of putting contemporary political events into a long perspective without seeming cynical about the present or tediously nostalgic about the past. He became the Times obituaries editor in 1993. After retirement in 1999, he continued his broadcasting and freelance writing career. He also continued to seek out the best restaurants, to frequent the Garrick and Beefsteak clubs and to attend parties assiduously, eagerly receiving and dispensing the latest gossip.

He is survived by his wife, Carol, whom he married in 1965.

Simon Hoggart writes: Unlike many political writers and commentators, Tony Howard knew that history did not begin in 1997, or even 1979. His memory stretched back far further; he knew the Macmillans, the Butlers, the Gaitskells and the Wilsons, and he also knew that their experience had just as much to teach us as that of the Blairs and Camerons. Which is why he was in such demand for radio and TV even after he had retired. Though he did not know the current crop of leading politicians, his antennae were as finely tuned as ever. Or perhaps he had just seen it all before.

Tony adored the competition of the office as much as Westminster politics, and was delighted to see his colleagues at each other's throats. But at the same time he was one of the kindest people I've met. Everyone who knew him well could quote acts of generosity, some small, others much greater, nearly always unnoticed except by the grateful recipients. (I know he saved my job at least once, after some act of indiscipline.)

He was something of a workaholic, writing several biographies as well as holding down his job. And he was always the first to leave the Observer drinking school at the new El Vino's. "Some of us have work to do," he would say after a brisk lunch, while his best friend and brother-in-law Alan Watkins would reply: "There is no need to rush, Master Howard. We shall finish our wine without undue haste," as Tony bustled off.

Robin Lustig writes: I first met Tony Howard in the summer of 1968, when he was Washington correspondent of the Observer and I was an undergraduate with a passionate interest in American politics. Armed only with a letter of introduction from my tutor, I contacted Tony to seek his advice and assistance as I researched a final-year dissertation on the doomed presidential campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy. He was charming, generous with his time and knowledgable. It was the start of a friendship that lasted for more than 40 years.

"Don't bother with newspapers," he advised me when I told him I intended to be a journalist. "Go straight into broadcasting – that's where the future is." I didn't follow his advice, but when he took over as editor of the New Statesman, and I was a young Reuters correspondent, he printed my stuff from time to time (under a nom de plume as it was strictly against the rules). Later, when he rejoined the Observer as deputy editor, I was already installed there, and he was soon giving me space on the leader pages.

When he left the Observer, I asked him if he intended to return to The World Tonight, for which he had earlier been an occasional presenter. "No," he said. "I don't believe in going back – but why don't you have a go?" There was only one big disadvantage, he said. You had to stay sober until 11pm.

Anthony Michell Howard, journalist and broadcaster, born 12 February 1934; died 19 December 2010

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