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."