Hugh Cudlipp

British journalist (1913–1998)

Hubert Kinsman Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp, OBE (28 August 1913 – 17 May 1998), was a Welsh journalist and newspaper editor noted for his work on the Daily Mirror in the 1950s and 1960s. He served as chairman of the Mirror Group group of newspapers from 1963 to 1967, and the chairman of the International Publishing Corporation from 1968–1973.

Hugh Cudlipp was born in Cardiff, the youngest of three sons of William Christopher Cudlipp, a traveling salesman, and Bessie Amelia, née Kinsman. He left the Howard Gardens High School for boys (later Howardian High School) at the age of fourteen, working for a number of short lived local newspapers before transferring at the age of sixteen to Manchester and a job on the Manchester Evening Chronicle. In 1932, aged nineteen, he moved to London to take up a position as features editor of the Sunday Chronicle. In 1935, he joined the staff of the Daily Mirror. Cudlipp was Chairman of the Mirror Group of newspapers from 1963 to 1967, where he oversaw the 1964 launch, as a broadsheet, of The Sun. Intended to replace the failing Daily Herald, the choice of format was to prevent it encroaching on Daily Mirror sales. The IBA insisted that the film was withdrawn from transmission so as not to conflict with legislation on broadcasting in periods just before general elections. The script of the film was instead published in sections by several newspapers. The film was finally transmitted on ITV after the election.

His first wife was Edith Parnell, who, in 1929, as a 16 year old schoolgirl, became the second person (and youngest person at the time) to swim across the Bristol Channel from Penarth to Weston super Mare. They married in 1936, although the marriage was not a success as she was simultaneously in love with Tom Darlow, editor of John Bull and kept up an affair with him. She died on 13 November 1938, aged 25, after complications from a Caesarean section in a Harley Street clinic. The following year, he married Joan Latimer Hyland, who had been editor of the Woman's Mirroruntil their marriage; she died in August 2017.

After his death, his widow Joan joined with former colleagues from the British press to found the Cudlipp Trust with the aim of "education and furthering the interests and standing of journalism". The trust organises the annual Hugh Cudlipp Lecture and student journalism prize. Between 1999 and 2004, the lecture was given at the London Press Club, then between 2005 and 2015, it was hosted at the London College of Communication. It returned to the London Press Club in 2016. Delivering the 2005 lecture, Michael Grade, the then Chairman of the BBC, described Cudlipp as "one of the giants of British journalism and one of its greatest editors." The British Press Awards gives an annual "Hugh Cudlipp Award".