English journalism enjoyed a golden age in the quarter century preceding the advent of broadcasting in the 1920s. With mass as well as class readerships and with no other medium as a rival in shaping opinion or disseminating news, the press was in truth the fourth estate. Among many great newspapermen J. A. Spender stood out as a remarkable figure. The paper he edited for twenty-five years, the afternoon Westminster Gazette, became a staple in the reading diet of influential people, in London especially, and solely on account of the leading articles that flowed in a steady stream from the one powerful pen. His biographer Wilson Harris wrote how "day by day on that pea-green front page Spender preached a robust and reasoned Liberalism which sometimes left impetuous Radicals impatient but won high and constant commendation from such leaders as Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Haldane and Morley." It should...