[12][13] As he had long been determined "to edit a perfect newspaper",[14] Rintoul initially insisted on "absolute power"[14] over content, commencing a long-lasting tradition of the paper's editor and proprietor being one and the same person.

The magazine was vocal in its opposition to the First Opium War (1839–1842), commenting that "all the alleged aims of the expedition against China are vague, illimitable, and incapable of explanation, save only that of making the Chinese pay the opium-smugglers.

"[19] In 1853, The Spectator's lead book reviewer George Brimley published an anonymous and unfavourable notice of Charles Dickens's Bleak House, typical of the paper's enduring contempt for him as a "popular" writer "amusing the idle hours of the greatest number of readers; not, we may hope, without improvement to their hearts, but certainly without profoundly affecting their intellects or deeply stirring their emotions.

[21] By the end of the year, Scott sought his escape, selling the title for £4,200 in December 1858 (equivalent to £533,901 in 2023) to two British-based Americans, James McHenry and Benjamin Moran.

[24] The need to promote the Buchanan position in Britain had been reduced as British papers such as The Times and The Saturday Review turned in his favour, fearing the potential effects of a split in the Union.

The issue of 25 January 1862, published in the wake of the Trent Affair, argued that "The Southern Bid" for active support in return for an Abolition promise, "demands careful examination".

[16] They also launched an all-out assault on Benjamin Disraeli, accusing him in a series of leaders of jettisoning ethics for politics by ignoring the atrocities committed against Bulgarian civilians by the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s.

Among his various schemes were the establishment of a Spectator Experimental Company, to show that new soldiers could be trained up to excellence in six months, the running of a Cheap Cottage Exhibition, which laid the foundations for Letchworth Garden City, and the impassioned defence of Free Trade against Joseph Chamberlain's protectionist 'Tariff Reform' programme.

After years of illness, Strachey decided at the end of 1924 to sell his controlling interest in the paper to his recently appointed business manager, Sir Evelyn Wrench.

Perhaps his most remembered achievement as editor of The Spectator was the campaign to ease unemployment in the mining town of Aberdare, one of the worst hit by the crisis of 1928, when joblessness reached 40% in South Wales.

"[32] When the conflict broke, the team abandoned their Gower Street office for Harmondsworth, but within a few days decided to return to London: the basement caught fire from shrapnel, and the printers were bombed, but the paper continued to appear each week.

In February 1947, when a fuel shortage suspended the publication of weekly magazines, The Spectator appeared in an abridged form over two successive Thursdays on page 2 of the Daily Mail.

Hamilton successfully balanced a keener focus on current affairs with some more raucous contributions as the young team behind Private Eye were commissioned to write a mock eight-page Child's Guide to Modern Culture.

Churchill's book was all but obliterated by the review, which said that "four fifths" of it "could have been compiled by anyone with a pair of scissors, a pot of paste and a built-in prejudice against Mr Butler and Sir William Haley".

[citation needed] The "Tory Leadership" article prompted a furious response from many Spectator readers and caused Macleod, for a time, to be shunned by political colleagues.

Sometimes called "The Great Procrastinator" because of his tendency to leave writing leaders until the last minute,[16] Lawson had been City editor for The Sunday Telegraph and Alec Douglas-Home's personal assistant during the 1964 United Kingdom general election.

[36] Gale shared Creighton's political outlook,[16] in particular his strong opposition to the EEC, and much of the next five years was spent attacking the pro-EEC prime minister Edward Heath, treating his eventual defeat by Margaret Thatcher with undisguised delight.

[36] To this end he persuaded Auberon Waugh (who had been sacked by Nigel Lawson) to return from the New Statesman, and enticed Richard West and Jeffrey Bernard from the same magazine.

Cluff had reached the conclusion that the paper "would be best secured in the hands of a publishing group", and sold it to Australian company John Fairfax, which promptly paid off the overdraft.

After the 1997 United Kingdom general election, Johnson averted a decline in The Spectator's sales by recruiting "New Labour contributors", and shifting the magazine's direction slightly away from politics.

In 1996, the magazine's Christmas issue featured an interview with The Spice Girls, in which the band members gave their "Euro-sceptic and generally anti-labour" views on politics.

"[52] In February 2003, Johnson was the subject of a Scotland Yard inquiry relating to a column by Taki Theodoracopulos titled "Thoughts on Thuggery" targeting barrister Peter Herbert, a black man.

"[53] In October 2004, a Spectator editorial suggested that the death of the hostage Kenneth Bigley was being over-sentimentalised by the people of Liverpool, accusing them of indulging in a "vicarious victimhood" and of possessing a "deeply unattractive psyche".’[54] Simon Heffer had written the leader but, as editor, Johnson took full responsibility for it.

In the same year David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, resigned from the government after it emerged he had been having an affair with the publisher of The Spectator, Kimberly Quinn, and had fast-tracked her nanny's visa application.

In July 2013, the magazine ran a column by Taki Theodoracopulos defending the far-right Greek political party Golden Dawn, which drew criticism.

", in which he wrote "there is an understanding that no leader – especially, despite the age of equality, a woman – can look grotesque on television and win a general election" and discussed the looks of the two female candidates in detail.

[87] In June 2023, it was reported that, following a breakdown in discussions relating to a financial dispute, Lloyds Bank was planning to take over control of the companies owning the Daily Telegraph and Spectator titles and sell them off.

[91] When a company linked to the United Arab Emirates attempted to buy TMG, chairman Andrew Neil threatened to quit, saying: "You cannot have a major mainstream newspaper group owned by an undemocratic government or dictatorship where no one has a vote.

[105] As with its sister publication The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is generally Atlanticist and strongly Eurosceptic in outlook,[97] favouring close ties with the United States and NATO rather than with the European Union.

[111][112] Ahead of the 2019 United Kingdom general election, the leading article in the magazine argued that illegal migrants living in the UK should be offered British citizenship.