Piers Morgan’s demand that the Earl of Spencer should withdraw copies of his book about his sister, Diana, from sale because of a serious inaccuracy brings back memories of my own experience of being required to recall a publication that had reached the shelves.
In 1990 Business magazine, an award-winning title jointly owned by the Financial Times, and Conde Nast, the publishers of Vogue, Tatler, GQ, World of Interiors and other luxury magazines published an article with the good intention of highlighting companies that had grown organically rather than by acquisition. Unfortunately, the writer introduced an aside about one of the companies profiled, referring to a past incident in its history, to which the business took extreme offence.
At the time I was publisher of Business, and hence ultimately responsible, regardless of whether or not I had played any part in the article. We were bombarded with demands by the aggrieved party for completely withdrawal of the magazine. One otherwise routine afternoon an individual – who rather oddly, I recall, had come all the way from Caerphilly for the purpose – strode into my office in the King’s Road in Chelsea and handed me a sheet of paper. A writ had been served on me for libel.
We had hoped an apology in the next issue would be enough. Withdrawing copies would be difficult and the consequences would be damaging as we would be obliged to refund our advertisers. These included prestige car brands, such as BMW, a regular in every issue, and luxury goods manufacturers, and our reputation would be harmed.
After meetings in chambers with m’learned friends in Middle Temple, however, we were persuaded somewhat against our better judgment to withdraw. Our distributors, Comag, were asked to pull copies, no mean feat given the sizeable number of outlets then offering magazines for sale. Our sales were mainly in Britain, but we also had some overseas sales and airline sales as well, plus subscriptions.
Once we had recovered as many as we could Comag sliced out the offending page and returned the magazine to the newsstands with a sticker on the front saying the relevant pages had been removed for legal reasons. Our insurers did not want a court action and wanted settlement. They paid the company £35,000.
The positive aspect, if it can be described as such, was that once back on the newsstands it sold very well. People, strangely, felt they had to buy that month’s issue as if to see what had been cut out and to puzzle why.
Neither of the two parties involved in this minor tussle remain. The comprehensive coverage of business in Britain’s newspapers meant a monthly magazine without a tied readership always struggled for relevance and sales, though we did manage to achieve a circulation of around 50,000 and won national awards for our stylish take on contemporary events and personalities. A fatal blow was delivered by the first Iraq war which resulted in a big drop in air travel and badly hit sales in airports, one of our strengths. New brooms at the FT and Conde Nast were looking for savings and were not so committed to the joint venture as their predecessors. The office furniture company we had offended lasted longer, collapsing into administration with debts of £30m in 2019.
The writ was served on me as publisher and managing director of Business People Publications. In this role I had not been involved in the original article as we strictly observed a wall between the editorial and business sides of the enterprise. Indeed, the editor, previously a prominent Sunday newspaper journalist, had always refused to accept any outside discussion of the content or direction of the title editorially and had shown signs of deep resentment at my appointment from the FT where I had held editorial roles.
I had been on secondment during my period at Business and having had a fascinating insight into the world of high-end magazine publishing with regular visits to the Vogue headquarters in Hanover Square I returned to the more sober environment of the FT. The sickening experience of receiving a writ is one I would not want to repeat.
Rhys David
September 24th, 2026
