Bill Deedes damns Telegraph management from beyond the grave

Former Telegraph editor Lord Deedes, who died last August age 94, considered resigning from the Daily Telegraph because he did not approve of the paper’s new management under new owners the Barclay Brothers, according to the Independent.

Deedes attacked the Barclay Brothers’ regime in a memo given to biographer Stephen Robinson with instructions not to publish details of it until after his funeral, the Independent reports.

According to the Indy’s account, Deedes’ memo is critical of the staff cuts at the Telegraph and the recruitment of Daily Mail executives: “This was a newspaper they were ready to pay £660m for but it was being produced by an unsatisfactory staff … Not a word of encouragement or praise came the way of the journalists who produced this high-value newspaper, though reason suggests they must have had something to do with what the Barclays had paid.”

Robinson’s book, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, is to be published on 27 March.