The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper founded in 1855. Its sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph was founded in 1961. As of 2002, the Telegraph is the highest selling British broadsheet, with an average daily circulation of 920,000. This compares with a circulation of 620,000 for The Times, 230,000 for The Independent, and 400,000 for The Guardian. However these figures are distorted by the varying numbers of copies of each that are given away at hotels, railway stations, and in aeroplanes.
The Telegraph is known for its right-wing politics. Within this classification it takes a roughly central position on the authoritarian/libertarian axis. It is less traditionalist and more libertarian than The Spectator but more traditionalist and less libertarian than The Economist. Personal links between the editorial team and the leadership of the UK Conservative Party (the Tories) vary in strength but the combination of these links with the paper's influence over Conservative activists result in the paper often being jokingly referred to as the Torygraph.
Its editors in recent years have been the renowned W. F. Deedes, Sir Max Hastings (1986-1995), and Charles Moore (1995-2003). On 1st October 2003 the newspaper announced that Moore was stepping down as the editor of the paper in order to spend his time working on a biography of Margaret Thatcher. His successor is Martin Newland.
The Daily Telegraph is owned by Hollinger Inc of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the newspaper group controlled by Canadian businessman, Conrad Black. Hollinger Inc. also owns the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post, and other right-leaning publications such as The Spectator, a weekly magazine edited by the British Member of Parliament, Boris Johnson.
In 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave a controversial interview to The Daily Telegraph which severely damaged Anglo-German relations and added to international tension leading to World War I.
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