Diary: William Cash, outgoing editor of the Catholic Herald

I spent a weekend in late September at the Cliveden Literary Festival, at the famous (perhaps notorious) mansion in Berkshire which used to be owned by the Anglo-American Astor family. One little-noted aspect of the 1960s Profumo affair – in which the Cliveden party antics of showgirl Christine Keeler helped to bring down the Macmillan government – is how the scandal has detracted from the fiercely anti-Catholic politics of its Nazi-sympathising 1930s chatelaine Nancy Astor.

The first woman to take a seat as a British MP, Astor disliked Catholics almost as much as she disliked Jews, claiming that during the Second World War there was a Catholic plot to subvert the Foreign Office. She was renowned for telling the editor of the Observer, owned by her husband, not to hire Catholics as they would take it over, and that the “bishops would be there in a week”. 

Thankfully, no such anti-papist prejudice exists at Cliveden today. A big draw at the festival was the fabulously successful historian William Dalrymple, trained up by such scholarly monks as Fr Henry Wansbrough at Ampleforth (who has just turned 90). He was talking about his new book, The Golden Road, which explores what the modern world owes to Indian culture.

A few days later, as I left London Kings Cross for York, a part of me – as a near-contemporary at Cambridge whose books have never troubled the New York Times bestseller list – began to quietly die as I saw the station platforms festooned with six-foot-high ads for The Golden Road, with “William Dalrymple” jumping out in huge letters like some film star. 

In an ironic twist that Evelyn Waugh might have relished, I was on my way to give a talk to Ampleforth College’s sixth form on “My life as editor of the Catholic Herald”. Last month I wrote about how 2024 marks the 140th anniversary of the Herald’s origins, with 16 editors since 1884. The Herald is now on its 17th editor, with me having handed the baton to my colleague and friend Serenhedd James. I first brought SJ (as he is more usually known) into the Herald fold back in January 2021 – the month I took over as editor – when I commissioned him to write a brilliant review of a collection of Herald cartoons from our long-standing cartoonist John Ryan, identifying his pirate Captain Pugwash as a Catholic who went to confession.

SJ soon had his own column, and then became my deputy, doing all the hard work while I was lunching with cardinals or co-leading pilgrimages along the Compostela de Santiago or the Via Francigena to Rome. Introducing a new Travel and Pilgrimage section has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of my tenure; so has reporting from the Holy Land or being smuggled into Ukraine across the Hungarian border in a diplomatic bus. The Herald is in very good hands as I step down as coxswain, and as it embarks on an exciting new, fully US-owned chapter in its rich and influential history. 

At Ampleforth, a pupil asked: “How did you become editor?” Providence and accident was the only honest reply – there was nobody else to fill Dan Hitchens’ place when he unexpectedly resigned, after less than a year, during the pandemic. The board asked me to “step up” as I had edited and founded Spear’s – a financial magazine devoted to the pursuit of wealth. Taking on a grand-dame Catholic title that had published the likes of Graham Greene, JRR Tolkien and GK Chesterton was a new direction, to say the least. 

It has been a wonderful, nearly 10-year journey – I became a director in 2015 – and I must thank the extraordinarily talented editorial and production team for all the brilliant work that has led the Herald to be nominated for so many PPA awards over the last few years, as well as doubling our online readership since its new owners, GEM, took a 50.1 per cent stake in 2023.

Longevity is a Herald trademark, and special thanks are due to the indefatigable Andy Leisinger, who has been the UK managing director for over 20 years. That’s nothing compared to his predecessor Otto Herchan, however, who served the Herald for 48 years from inside a thick cloud of pipe smoke.

Throughout its history, the Herald has been a survivor due to its independence and determined defence of Catholic values – at whatever price. After the Second World War, because of paper shortages, it had to change printers often. For an awkward period of time, under owner Ernest Vernor Miles – so his son John told me – it had to share a printing press with a pornographer. Luckily no one found out and Pius XII gave Ernest a papal knighthood.

Talking of knighthoods, Sir Rocco Forte should also be honoured after 25 years of  Herald support though all financial weathers.

It has been a great privilege to have served as spiritual captain of the Herald ship as it now heads off to conquer the new digital frontier. “What are your plans?” asked one staff member when the news broke. Well, I’m heading off on pilgrimage, of course.

This article appears in the November 2024 edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

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