Although one of the youngest MPs ever to be elected to the House of Commons, Esmond Harmsworth’s political career was something of a disappointment, not least to him. Part of his problem lay in the political machinations of his father and the exorbitant demands he made in return for the support of his newspapers. Neither Bonar Law nor Baldwin were to be blackmailed into giving Harmsworth a senior political post and he never gained their trust. He left the Commons for good in 1929 and became increasingly active in running the family newspaper business, Associated Newspapers, chairing the Board from 1932 until 1971. As Chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors Association from 1934 until 1961, he had to deal with some very big beasts in the newspaper jungle, but he managed to weld them into a harmonious body and one that consistently defended the freedom of the press. He was always open to counsel and cautious in action, but it would be a mistake to think of him as indecisive. He simply liked to weigh things very carefully. He was a man of warmth and acumen, blessed with an almost irresistible charm and a great sense of humour.
Esmond Cecil Harmsworth was born on 29 may 1898, the youngest of three sons born to Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and his wife, Mary Lilian (d. 1937), daughter of George Wade Share, of Forest Hill. Harold Harmsworth had been the financial wizard behind the rise of the Harmsworth press, although his elder brother, Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, was the better journalist. He had been made Secretary of State for Air in Lloyd George’s wartime coalition and thereafter nursed political ambitions that were never to be realised.
Esmond was educated at Chatham House, Ramsgate and at Eton. He was commissioned into the Royal Marine Artillery in 1917. Both his older brothers were killed in action. Esmond served as Aide-de-Camp to the Prime Minister at the Paris Peace Conference. In the same year on 15 November he won a by-election in the Isle of Thanet as a Conservative ‘Anti-Waste’ candidate. Aged only nineteen, he was ‘the baby of the House’.
Northcliffe died in 1922 and The Times was sold. The Daily Mail and General Trust company was created to control the newspapers which Lord Rothermere retained, principally the Daily Mail. Harmsworth’s political career was not helped by an over-zealous father who in 1922 told Andrew Bonar Law that he would withdraw his newspapers' support unless Esmond was given cabinet office - a threat which the prime minister disregarded. The most he would offer was a Parliamentary Secretaryship, an offer spurned. Not in the least undeterred, when Baldwin succeeded the dying Bonar Law, Rothermere repeated his threat to no avail. Thereafter the papers he controlled were at best an unreliable ally to the Conservative party and at times looked to promote Lloyd George. Harmsworth was handicapped also because he was taken to be the mouthpiece of his father’s increasingly eccentric right-wing views. In fact his own attitude reflected a more liberal conservatism, for which he received little credit.
Harmsworth stood down at the 1929 General Election and chaired Associated Newspapers from 1932 to 1971 and the parent company, Daily Mail & General Trust Ltd, from 1938 until his death. His father had begun to build with his assistance a chain of provincial papers and under his regime the flagging fortunes of the Daily Mail revived. In 1934 he was elected, surprisingly young, to succeed Lord Riddell as chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association - a post he retained until 1961. He was an able and tactful negotiator, praised widely for his dealings over the allocation of newsprint in the war and with the print unions after it. His handling of the proprietors’ case in the 1955 newspaper strike won particular praise. He was chairman of the Newsprint Supply Company from 1940 to 1959. During the war he also served on the Advisory Council to the Ministry of Information. On relinquishing the chairmanship of Associated Newspapers he assumed the titles of President and Director of Group Finance, but essentially took a back seat.
Harmsworth moved in a slightly raffish social set and his looks were such that women fell for him “like ninepins”. He was a friend of the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, and in the autumn of 1936 played an important part in keeping the press silent for so long about their friendship. He also suggested to Baldwin that the abdication might be averted by a morganatic marriage. Baldwin had little love for the Harmsworth family but he agreed to put the idea to the cabinet and then to the Dominion governments. Almost certainly he anticipated the outcome. There was little support for the proposal and the abdication followed.
Harmsworth succeeded his father in the Viscountcy in 1940. He was married three times and had four children.[1] His first marriage was to Margaret Hunam Redhead, daughter of William Lancelot Redhead, on 12 January 1920 (they were divorced 1938). They had three children: Lorna Peggy Vyvyan Harmsworth (born 1920), married to Sir Neil Cooper-Key; Esmé Mary Gabrielle Harmsworth (1922–2011) who married Rowland Baring, 3rd Earl of Cromer; and Vere Harmsworth, 3rd Viscount Rothermere (1925–1998), who succeeded his father as Chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1971. His second marriage to Ann Geraldine Mary Charteris, widow of the 3rd Baron O’Neill and daughter of Captain Hon. Guy Lawrence Charteris and his wife, Frances Lucy Tennant, took place on 28 June 1945 but she left him for the author Ian Fleming and they were divorced in 1952. His last marriage was to Mrs Mary Ohrstrom of Dallas, Texas, daughter of Kenneth Murchison, on 28 March 1966. They had one son, Vyvyan.
Once the war was over he and Beaverbrook resumed their friendly rivalry as press barons, but he greatly strengthened Associated Newspapers by diversification into television (though he sold out too soon), property, and North Sea oil exploration. He also had wide interests in the Canadian paper-making industry. In 1952 he took over the ailing Daily Sketch and Sunday Dispatch from Lord Kemsley and in 1960 when the News Chronicle and the Star, despite their Liberal affiliations, felt obliged to accept amalgamation with the Daily Mail and its companion, the Evening News, respectively, Rothermere could look on it as the high point of a highly successful career. By the end of the following decade, however, he was having to make economies and to sack journalists, something that he found peculiarly distasteful. An internal report had shown that the company had a projected loss over five years of £32 million. In 1971 he ceded control to his son, who merged the Daily Mail and the Sketch in tabloid form.
Though an unwavering Conservative, Rothermere never intervened directly in his papers. This was in marked contrast to Beaverbrook. Like his father, he was more concerned with finance than journalism. He had many other interests - farming, racing, and history. He had, it was said, the disposition of a scholar and read widely. He was a connoisseur of art, but also an excellent tennis player, both lawn and real, and preserved his athleticism into old age. The University of Newfoundland was another major interest. He was the first chancellor of the Memorial University from 1952 to 1961.
In 1946 he bought Daylesford, near Chipping Norton, the former seat of Warren Hastings. He filled it with Hastings memorabilia. He had also been given the crown lease of a part of St James's Palace—Warwick House— by his father as a birthday present in 1923. At both houses he entertained on a considerable scale and was an excellent host.
Daylesford was sold and its contents dispersed in 1977 shortly before he died at his London home on 12 July 1978, aged 80. He was succeeded by his son, Vere Harmsworth.