On the 1st of January 1785, a man named John Walter launched a publication that would eventually become the most influential newspaper in British history, though it did not yet bear that name. Walter, a former insurance employee who had lost his job after his company collapsed following losses from a Jamaican hurricane, began his new venture as The Daily Universal Register. He had purchased the patent for logography, a printing method invented by Henry Johnson that was initially touted as faster and more precise, and used it to open a printing house. The first edition appeared on that crisp winter morning, but Walter would change the title after 940 editions to The Times on the 1st of January 1788. His early efforts to secure Continental news, particularly from France, built a reputation among policy makers and financiers, even as he faced a sixteen-month incarceration in Newgate Prison for libels printed in his paper. The paper's influence grew rapidly, aided by the adoption of the steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig in 1814, which allowed for mass production and distribution via steam trains to urban centers. By 1854, circulation had reached 51,200, a testament to the paper's ability to pay better than rivals for information and writers, establishing a foundation of financial success and political power that would define its future.
The Shadow of War
The Times distinguished itself as one of the first newspapers to send war correspondents to cover specific conflicts, a practice that would forever change the relationship between the press and the military. William Howard Russell, the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War, produced dispatches that were so influential they helped shape public opinion and even policy back in England. The paper's reputation was further cemented by its role in the 1930s, when editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with government supporters of appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain. During this period, candid news reports by Norman Ebbut from Berlin that warned of Nazi warmongering were rewritten in London to support the appeasement policy, a decision that would later be scrutinized heavily. The paper also became a platform for controversial figures, such as Kim Philby, a double agent with primary allegiance to the Soviet Union who served as a correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines, yet he later defected to the Soviet Union in 1963 when discovery was inevitable. The paper's editorial stance during World War II also drew sharp criticism; in December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, assistant editor E. H. Carr sided with the Communists in a Times leader, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and the article in a speech to the House of Commons. This incident earned the paper the popular nickname of the threepenny Daily Worker, a reference to the price of the Communist Party's Daily Worker.
In 1981, the landscape of British journalism shifted dramatically when Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch acquired The Times and The Sunday Times from the Thomson Corporation. The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with unions by company negotiators John Collier and Bill O'Neill, and Murdoch gave legal undertakings to maintain separate journalism resources for the two titles. This era marked the end of the hot-metal Linotype printing process, which had been used since the 19th century, and its replacement by computer input and photocomposition. Between March 1981 and May 1982, the paper reduced its print room staff by half, a move that would eventually lead to the Wapping dispute of 1986, when The Times moved from New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road to new offices in Wapping. The transition was not without controversy; Robert Fisk, seven times British International Journalist of the Year, resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as political censorship of his article on the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. Fisk wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning, citing meddling with his stories and the paper's pro-Israel stance. The paper also underwent significant changes in format, switching from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 to appeal to younger readers and commuters, and introducing new typefaces like Times Modern in 2006 to improve legibility in smaller font sizes.
Scandals and Corrections
The history of The Times is punctuated by a series of high-profile scandals and corrections that have tested its reputation for reliability. In 2019, the paper published an article about Imam Abdullah Patel that wrongly claimed Patel had blamed Israel for the 2003 murder of a British police officer by a terror suspect in Manchester. The story also falsely claimed that Patel ran a primary school that had been criticized by Ofsted for segregating parents at events, which Ofsted said was contrary to British democratic principles. The Times settled Patel's defamation claim by issuing an apology and offering to pay damages and legal costs. Another controversy arose in 2019 when the paper published an article titled Female Circumcision is like clipping a nail, claimed speaker, which featured a photo of Sultan Choudhury beside the headline, leading some readers to incorrectly infer that Choudhury had made the comment. Choudhury lodged a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation and sued The Times for libel. In 2020, The Times issued an apology, amended its article, and agreed to pay Choudhury damages and legal costs. The paper also faced criticism in December 2020 when Cage and Moazzam Begg received damages of £30,000 plus costs in a libel case they had brought against The Times. A report in The Times suggested that Cage and Begg were supporting a man who had been arrested in relation to a knife attack in Reading in which three men were murdered. The paper was forced to correct a false article in January 2025 about electric vehicle sales, following a successful complaint to IPSO, and in October 2025, it published an article falsely claiming to feature quotes from former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio regarding mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, which was deleted two hours after publication.
The Digital Frontier
The transition to the digital age has been a defining challenge for The Times, as it navigates the shift from print to online platforms while maintaining its status as a newspaper of record. The Times and The Sunday Times have had an online presence since 1996, originally at the-times.co.uk and sunday-times.co.uk, and later at timesonline.co.uk and thetimes.com. Both papers are now hosted on thetimes.com, with iOS and Android editions available in the same app, The Times: UK & World News. In July 2010, News UK required readers who do not subscribe to the print edition to pay £2 per week to read The Times and The Sunday Times online. This move led to a dramatic drop in website visits, which decreased by 87% after the paywall was introduced in October 2010, from 21 million unique users per month to 2.7 million one month later. However, the paper has since recovered, with thetimes.com site having a readership of 103 million in November 2024, and 600,000 digital-only paid subscribers as of September 2024. The paper also launched Times Radio in 2020, which covers news and politics both nationally and internationally, with an average weekly reach of 604,000 listeners at the end of 2024. The Times Digital Archive is available by subscription, and the paper has been recognized by the Reuters Institute in 2024 as having the ninth highest trust rating out of 15 different outlets polled.
The Type and the Text
The visual identity of The Times has evolved significantly over its history, with the paper playing a pivotal role in the development of typography. The Times is the originator of the widely used Times New Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with Monotype Imaging for its legibility in low-tech printing. The typeface was commissioned after Stanley Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated. Victor Lardent, an artist from The Times' advertising department, created the typeface under Morison's supervision, using an older typeface named Plantin as the basis for his design but making revisions for legibility and economy of space. Times New Roman made its debut in the issue of the 3rd of October 1932, and after one year, the design was released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch typeface five times since 1972. The paper has introduced several variants, including Times Europa in 1972, Times Roman in 1982, Times Millennium in 1991, Times Classic in 2001, and Times Modern in 2006, each designed to improve legibility and adapt to new printing technologies. The paper also began printing headlines in a new typeface, Times Modern, in November 2006, which uses 45-degree angled bracket serifs to enhance readability in smaller font sizes.