Sir Andreas Whittam Smith, founder of The Independent newspaper, has died aged 88, his family have announced.
The Daily Telegraph financial journalist oversaw the publication’s birth in 1986 with colleagues Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds.
According to the BBC’s Amol Rajan, who served as editor of the newspaper starting in 2013, it was the first newspaper not to have permanent allegiance to a political party – “an exciting moment in the history of Fleet Street”.
Paying tribute to the man he described as “radical and pioneering”, Rajan wrote that Sir Andreas had “changed British journalism for the better and forever.”
A family spokesman announced Sir Andreas’s death on 29 November, saying that he was “surrounded by family until the end” and that he would be “greatly missed”.
He is survived by his wife, two children and three grandchildren.
Before founding The Independent, Sir Andreas worked at a number of British papers, including the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
In his tribute, Rajan said the newspaper was “a pioneer of print”, and “a symbol of Thatcher’s Britain – though not of her politics”.
He recalled an advertising campaign with the slogan: “The Independent. This is it. Are you?” The newspaper said it belonged “to no party or faction” and claimed to have a “tinge of republicanism”.
Religion played an important role in Sir Andreas’s life. He served as First Estate Church Commissioner from 2002 to 2017, in charge of the committee overseeing the Church of England’s multi-billion pound investment portfolio.
The Independent says that he was viewed as a “saintly” and “ecclesiastical” man on Fleet Street.
He was also formerly Chairman of the British Board of Film Classification, which required him to approve and rate films for release, which included approving the remake of Lolita.
Sir Andreas told the BBC in 2002 how he was described by the Daily Mail as an “urban liberal” for this controversial move “and I was very happy with ‘urban’.”
“That’s the only thing I can set against the wretched Bishop image.”
He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002 and knighted in 2015 for his public service, “particularly to the Church of England”.
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