He made it very plain that all conventional sources of information would remain shut until I was willing to return to the cosy but essentially sham game of being a political correspondent.

"[10] Wilson is thought by journalist John Simpson to have had a preference for secrecy and to have been fearful that such a practice would give his enemies and rivals a potential outlet.

[11] He was, though, absent from his post when President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in the Presidential election of 1968, which did not help relations with David Astor, Observer editor at the time.

[13] Under Howard's editorship the magazine published a rare non-British contributor: Gabriel García Márquez in March 1974, on the overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile the previous September.

Perhaps out of a sense of balance, he featured a series of critiques of the British Left, by the magazine's former editor Paul Johnson, a drinking companion and friend of Howard's, whose political rightward drift was well advanced by then.

After leaving The Observer, following an ill-fated editorial coup against Trelford,[4] he was a reporter on Newsnight and Panorama (1989–92), having previously presented Channel Four's Face the Press (1982–85).

According to Charter88 founder Anthony Barnett he opposed that organisation's petition, and helped run the official committee dedicated to commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution in 1988.

Howard assisted his long-standing friend Michael Heseltine[17] on his memoirs, Life in the Jungle: My Autobiography (2000),[18] and later published an official biography, Basil Hume: The Monk Cardinal (2005).

[17][21] Since 2013 the annual Anthony Howard Award has offered one young journalist two six-month paid placements on the politics desks of the New Statesman and The Times.