Alexander Chancellor


Alexander Surtees Chancellor, CBE was a British journalist.
Chancellor was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was the editor of the conservative Spectator magazine from 1975 to 1984. During his editorship the magazine was saved from extinction and transformed into the most influential political weekly in the country. In 1986, after a spell as deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph, Chancellor became the first Washington correspondent of the newly-launched quality broadsheet, The Independent, and subsequently launched and edited the paper's first Saturday magazine. In 1993 Chancellor spent a year in the United States working as an editor at The New Yorker magazine, where he oversaw the "Talk of the Town" section. Some thought him "bumbling" and a "laughing stock", imparting a "skepticism so dry and genial it apparently went unnoticed." This experience was the basis of a brilliant memoir, Some Times in America, which both satirised the ordeal and recorded his deep affection for New York and the United States. It was published in both the UK and the U.S. in 2000. In June 2014 he became editor of The Oldie magazine in succession to Richard Ingrams. Until January 2012, he contributed a weekly column in The Guardian, published in the "Weekend" supplement each Saturday. In March 2012, he began to contribute to The Spectator again, with a column entitled "Long Life".
Chancellor lived in Northamptonshire, and was the father of British model Cecilia Chancellor and the uncle of British actress Anna Chancellor. He was the grandson of Sir John Chancellor, the first Governor of Southern Rhodesia.
He was appointed a CBE in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to journalism.
Alexander Chancellor died on 28 January 2017, aged 77.