Fourth Leaders

    I have been meaning to get around to this subject for a while since it is a subject about which it is difficult to find information.  It is one of the few topics for which there is no entry in Wikipedia. That may mean, of course, that it is not interesting or important enough to be included.

    I ran across the phrase “Fourth Leaders” a few years back when reading a biography of Peter Fleming, the English author and brother of the arguably less interesting Ian. One learns from the book that, among many other things, Peter wrote Fourth Leaders for The Times. “Leader” is a term in English journalism that essentially refers to a “leading article” or “editorial” and although the phrase “Fourth Leader” could be applied broadly, it is generally associated only with a particular type of essay published only in The TImes.

    I hasten to add that if you go looking for them in The TImes you will not easily find them. They no longer exist and when they did they were not labelled “Fourth Leaders”. Nor were they always the fourth leading article on any particular page, either above or below the fold. As one reader notes: “Oh, by the way, at the outset I spoke of a fourth leader. Lest any literal-minded reader should take the trouble to tell me that it was fifth in the order of going in, let me point out that ‘fourth leader,” like “late night final,” is a trade and not a mathematical term.” (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, December 22,1953, p.4.)

    You will recognize them, however, since the Fourth Leader was the only humorous and whimsical article to be found in “The Thunderer” (as The TImes was called). I hasten again to add here that the Fourth Leaders” are ‘funny’ in a particular Anglo-arcane-allusive way; you are probably going to loudly chortle only if your Latin is good. As one writer notes: “Fourth Leaders would toss off literary quotations and assume that Latin tags were stored away in the rusty compartments of the Times’ universal mind. Oxbridge dons scanned the day’s Fourth Leader before descending to tutorials. The Fourth Leader was unashamedly elitist.”

The Rise and Fall of the Fourth Leaders

    The origin is traced back to 1914 where the purpose of the Fourth Leaders is also provided:

    “Humbly beg for a light leading article daily…” Chief.

Thus Northcliffe who in 1908 had purchased The TImes telegraphed the Editor on January 25, 1914. Such requests from Olympus however euphemistically phrased were ignored at peril and the following day  the ‘light’ (later ‘the third’, later still ‘the fourth’) leader appeared. The innovation was resisted by some of the old guard in the Printing House Square but gradually the readers took these capsules of light relief to their hearts; for over 50 years they were a British institution. Like other edifices propping up the country the ‘fourth’ was eventually deemed to have served its purpose. It was decreed that it carried within the seeds of a small (and vanishing) esoteric club - an anomaly in the new age of white-hot technology. On January 1967 it received its conge.” (“On This Day: February 23, 1914,” in The Times, Feb. 23, 1985. p.9.)

   Since the source above is from The Times one assumes that the first Fourth Leader is found in 1914, but another indicates that they are found from 1922 to 1966 (Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable, 2nd ed.). As well, there are a few articles about Fourth Leaders  in The Times in the early 1980s and one reader, lamenting their loss as “a disaster”, claims to have spotted one in 1973. (“Old Two Hundredth”, Brian G.D. Salt, Feb. 10, 1984.) Another letter writer, not lamenting the loss, thinks they are gone: “For generations the fourth leader was an immutable daily custom, undertaken often more with a sense of obligation than delight by writers whose thoughts were in the Balkans or with the Fleet. Writing for a readership much narrower than today’s, they produced an almost private genre, laced with whimsical nostalgia, literary allusions and rueful comment on everyday life which they could count on the reader recognizing - a genre now happily completely extinct.” (“A Ha'p'orth Of Difference”, The Times,  Feb. 4, 1984).

Books of Fourth Leaders

    Over the years (mainly in the 1950s), compilations of Fourth Leaders were published by The Times, usually with the titles The Times Fourth Leaders [year] or Fourth Leaders From The TImes [year]. I did find one from 1929 with the title, Light and Leading: Being Light Leaders Reprinted from The Times. Some of the notices for the books illustrate their appeal:

From 1955:

“They  [Fourth Leaders] are meant to be enjoyed-or skipped-and passed on-if they have amused you-to a kindred spirit. They are chosen from the daily columns of The Times where they appear to remind readers that whatever grave things may be happening in the world, there is no reason for not observing life with a smile. They take you round the seasons, asking no more of you than to give them a glance for a few minutes - and to be amused with the writers if you feel in the mood…. Put this little book by your bed, and let it tempt you every now and then to stay awake for a few extra minutes then to fall asleep in a nice relaxed mood. Or fall asleep as your eyes have got half-way down the page and your drowsy mind is half-way through a sentence. The writers will be with you in either case. All that they ask is that you should think kindly of enough of them to say that they have helped you to take things easily in a hard world.” Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, December 13, 1955, p.6.

From 1952:

“There are few people who daily buy the world’s most famous newspaper The Times who can say in honesty that they have read every word of it. But there must be a very small number of the paper’s readers who go to bed without finding the rewarding minutes in which to study and be delightfully entertained by the fourth leaders, those usually somewhat lighthearted contributions on any topic under the sun which happens to take the fancy of the leader-writer. These essays seldom offer a serious solution to the great problems of the day, but they will certainly solve the problem of selecting a Christmas present for a discerning friend or relative - for some 80 of the leaders have been collated in Fourth Leaders, a volume selling at 9s and published by the Times Publishing Co. Ltd.”, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, December 1, 1952, p.1.

  It appears that such books were bought: “I grew up assuming that all homes contained books; that this was normal. It was normal, too, that they were valued for their usefulness: to learn from at school, to dispense and verify information, and to entertain during the holidays. My father had collections of Times Fourth Leaders; my mother might enjoy a Nancy Mitford. “ (Julian Barnes, “My Life as a Bibliophile,” The Guardian, June 29, 2012.)

  

    It appears, as well, that Fourth Leader books were also promoted in the United States. A piece about the 1950 edition is found in Life magazine under the title “A Mouse for Milady’s Hat,” (Dec. 4, 1950): Fourth Leaders are “...so called because the items in question usually fall fourth in the sequence of editorials, or leaders, in each issue. In them the art of being unimportant is preserved and practiced with a charm and skill rare in our day. They are short. They are literate. At their best they gleam with gentle humor and are rich in pithy sentences which at once enthral and satisfy the reader.”

    On the same day, this is found in Time magazine:

“The Press: Your Head Is on Fire

"Some were pleased, some were shocked, none remained indifferent on hearing that the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, accompanied by his spouse, is to take off tomorrow from, one of the quadrangles of Christ Church in a helicopter."

To the uninitiated, a lighthearted essay on such a topic might seem out of place amid the somber rumblings of the London Times's editorial page. But generations of Britons have learned to expect just such things in the Thunderer's "fourth leader," i.e., the item usually fourth in sequence on its editorial page, an unfailing source of quiet, literate, gentle humor. Last week, for the second year in a row, the Times published a collection (Fourth Leaders from the Times; the Times Publishing Co., London; 8/6) of the year's best work of its anonymous editorial writers. Covering everything from stamp collecting to new arrivals at the zoo, the fourth leaders not only range the quirks of British life but also have an occasional smile for the quirks of journalism.”

   Although such essays were meant to be “light”  and humorous they were also supposed to be “elegantly-turned” and Peter Fleming’s first submission was rejected:

“My Dear Fleming,

    I am afraid this will not do. You must study our leader style rather more closely. Seven paragraphs is too many for a short article of this kind, and the editorial ‘we’ (which you employ more than once) is always a nightmare to me. Have another shot.

Yours sincerely, Geoffrey Dawson.”

He went on to write many Fourth Leaders over the years (although all of the Fourth Leaders are unsigned) and if you want to see a successful one read “Shaving Time” which is provided in Peter Fleming: A Biography, by Duff Hart-Davis.

Sources: It is very difficult to locate Fourth Leaders in The Times unless you have a specific reference to one, so finding a collection of them in a book is the best option. Here are a few from The Times I am aware of: “The Far-Fetched Flea,” (Nov. 6, 1951, p.7); “A Self-Made Cat,” (Aug.26, 1952, p.5); “Windmills,” Aug. 6, 1947,p.5). In 1955 there is a funny one about a chap who lost interest in continuing his swim across the Channel as he neared the French coast - “Mid-Channel Musings” (Sept.9, 1955, p.11). Apparently those musings prompted him to try again and that resulted in a follow-up fourth - “Fourth Leaders to the Fore,” (Oct. 25, 1958).

While it was Northcliffe’s demand for something “light” that led to their publication, credit for the creation of Fourth Leaders is sometimes given to the colonial editor of The Times, Douglas Woodruff. He later became editor of The Tablet and apparently his column “Talking at Random” is very Fourth Leader-like (see his obituary in The Times, March 11, 1978.)

As noted, the Fourth Leaders were published anonymously, but some authors (like Fleming) are known. Another was Joyce Anstruther who “wrote 60 Fourth Leaders for the newspaper between 1938 and 1940.” She was also the creator of Mrs. Miniver and wrote under the name Jan Struther. (see: “Made Famous for Soppiness,” David Hughes, The Spectator, Nov. 24, 2001.)