Tributes for Fleet Street giant Steven

Steven: former Mail on Sunday editor died on Sunday

Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright has paid tribute to the man who helped make the paper the force it is today, Stewart Steven, who died on Sunday aged 68.

Wright said Steven’s death had come as a great shock to everyone at the paper. He said he last spoke to him to discuss his regular MoS column just two days before his death.

“Stewart was a giant of Fleet Street. He took the fledgling Mail on Sunday and turned it into a major force in the Sunday newspaper market and in doing so reinvented Sunday newspaper journalism. He will be enormously missed by all of us.”

A report in the Daily Mail described him as “the buccaneer of Fleet Street” and the Evening Standard, which he edited, paid tribute to him as one of the most formidable figures in British journalism.

Steven did not go to university, but entered journalism as a copy boy working for the Manchester Guardian. He remained there for a year before doing his national service and then got his first job as a reporter on the Oxford Mail.

Steven made his way to the Daily Express via Central Press Features and the Western Daily Press and rose to the post of foreign editor, before becoming assistant editor of the Daily Mail in 1972.

He was editor of the Mail on Sunday from 1982 to 1992, taking its sales from 700,000 to more than two million.

From 1992 to 1995 he was editor of the Evening Standard and launched high-profile campaigns to save the accident and emergency department at Bart’s Hospital and to highlight the plight of the poor in the East End of London.

Stewart’s funeral – family and friends welcome – will be on Friday 30th January at 11 am at St Bride’s Fleet Street and there will be a memorial service later in the year.

Donations rather than flowers to;

The Development Foundation

The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery

Queen Square

London WC1N 3BG

Full obituary next week

By Dominic Ponsford