Memories of the 1970s Evening Standard: ‘Breathless, elitist, golden’

Stuart Kuttner relives the Standard's heyday and some of its most notable scoops.

Evening Standard newsroom in the 1970s - black and white image showing six men in shirts and ties at desks covered in paper — Evening Standard office in the 1970s. From left: Roy Wright, Charles Wintour, Reg Smith, Stuart Kuttner, ?, and Ivor Cole. Picture: Stuart Kuttner

This is an updated piece by Stuart Kuttner, former Evening Standard reporter from 1963 and news editor between 1971 and 1977, originally written for a staff reunion in June 2017.

It recalls an era of the London newspaper in which its paid circulation ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 daily.

The Evening Standard of our day was a superb newspaper with an immutable credo: to break the news and set the agenda.

Stuart Kuttner

Stuart Kuttner was news editor at the Evening Standard between 1971 and 1977. He was later deputy editor and managing editor at the News of the World.

Memories of the 1970s Evening Standard: ‘Breathless, elitist, golden’

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