The Berry Brothers

As a boy of 14 in the grimy Welsh mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, William Ewert Berry won first prize in an essay contest. Across the top of his essay the newsman-judge scrawled: "This competitor should enter journalism." He did; now, as Viscount Camrose, he is one of the greatest, and the most gentlemanly, of British press lords. Because he dislikes publicity, he is also the least known. Viscount Camrose, 73, and his younger (69) brother, Viscount Kemsley, owner of Britain's biggest chain of newspapers, control more newspapers and magazines than any other publishing family in the world. Last week in his annual report to stockholders, Lord Camrose totted up exactly how far he had gone since he first entered British journalism.

Camrose's Amalgamated Press Ltd. published 73 magazines in 1951-52, with a total circulation of more than 14 million, and made the biggest profit ($3,700,000) in its history. With quiet understatement, Camrose noted a few other triumphs: Six months ago "we launched Lion, the second of our postwar weeklies, [and] its sale is today well over 550,000 . . . Woman's Weekly . . . before the war . . . was just over 500.000 . . . Today it is more than 1,700,000 . . ."

Camrose's magazines are on the tables of almost every British home. Teen-age girls read his Home Chat, after they are married they read his Weldons Ladies Journal. For children he has comic books, for parsons Quiver; there are dozens of technical, trade and professional magazines, on everything from farming to motorcycling.

Fine Details. But Camrose's own favorite publication is not a magazine; it is his London Daily Telegraph, his only newspaper, which is run as a separate corporation. He picked it up when it was floundering with a circulation of only 84,000, built it up until it rivals the London Times in prestige, dwarfs it in circulation (970,900 v. 233,091). Sharply edited and crisply written, the Telegraph is as free of sex and sensation as the court circular, shows Camrose's liking for the unadorned fact. The Telegraph is not given to causes or crusades; it is staunchly but independently Conservative, whereas the Times in the past has supported the government even when it promoted socialism and appeasement.

From his suite of offices high in the Telegraph building on Fleet Street, Camrose keeps a close watch on his empire, an even closer watch on the Telegraph. On his 742-ton yacht he has a ship-to-shore phone, often calls staffers in the middle of the night; in his country home he has a teleprinter that keeps him in direct contact with the paper so "that I can watch the fine details, the way leaders are written, or the way type is set."

Camrose started learning the fine details on the Merthyr Tydfil paper, moved to Fleet Street when he was 19. He spent several years going from job to job, smilingly explains: "I was sacked from two--I think I was just too indolent.'' On $500, he started a magazine of his own called Advertising World. It was a success from the first issue, and Camrose sent for his brother Gomer, to join him. Shortly after, Camrose (who had been an amateur boxer) started Boxing. Soon he and his brother were putting out such specialized magazines wherever they spotted potential readers. The brothers worked together in the same room, shared a joint bank account and agreed so closely on everything that, as one old associate says, "It was a classic case of two heads nodding as one all the time."

Spend Boldly. By 1915 they had done well enough to buy the Sunday Times,* began adding papers in the provinces. Eleven years later they picked up the huge Amalgamated Press and its 70-odd magazines from the estate of the late great Lord Northcliffe (TIME, May 19) who had gone mad before he died. With Camrose as editorial boss and Kemsley, once described as the "greatest debenture salesman in British journalism," raising money and managing the finances, they continued to expand, buying and merging provincial papers that had been killing each other off with competition. Before long they had 25 papers in their chain.

When they bought the Telegraph in 1928. the Daily Mail's Lord Rothermere (brother of the titanic Northcliffe but no journalist himself) got worried. He poured millions into founding and promoting new provincial papers to fight Camrose and Kemsley. Camrose, whose formula for journalistic success is to "spend money and spend it boldly," opened his purse also. Finally, when a truce was declared, Camrose and his brother were on top.

Split Up. In 1937, the brothers split their holdings: Camrose took the magazines and the Telegraph, Kemsley held on to all the other 31 newspapers. Kemsley's dailies, with a circulation of 3.300,000, still account for almost half Britain's total provincial readership, while his Sunday Times, famed for its cultural sections, and his Daily Graphic, appealing to vulgar or common-man tastes, give him a circulation of 1,300,000 in London.

Kemsley's holdings have been a target for criticism, and once were in the forefront of a Royal Commission investigation. For that reason, in recent years the brothers have been chary of expanding in the newspaper field. Both apparently feel that their newspaper holdings are big enough.

*No kin to the daily London Times.

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