Dacre signs with agent for memoir

Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has signed with Rogers, Coleridge and White (RCW) for his memoir, The Bookseller understands.

The Guardian recently reported that Dacre was working on his autobiography having signed with a literary agent. When asked about his literary ambitions, the 69-year-old Dacre told the newspaper: “Every editor thinks about writing his memoirs.”

The Bookseller understands Dacre has signed with RCW’s Natasha Fairweather although she told The Bookseller she was unable to comment when asked if she had taken on the former editor. Her clients also include Boris Johnson, Ken Clarke and Mariella Frostrup.

Dacre stepped down as Daily Mail editor this summer after 26 years in the role. He is now chairman and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro newspapers and Mail Online. He started his career as a messenger at the Sunday Express during his school holidays.

Meanwhile Dacre heavily criticised former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger’s recently published autobiography at the Society of Editors conference in Manchester on Sunday evening (4th November), according to Press Gazette. After collecting the Society’s first ever lifetime achievement award, Dacre apparently devoted several minutes of his half-hour speech to Rusbridger’s Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now (Canongate). 

“Much of the book is a thoughtful, if somewhat prolix, analysis of the tectonic changes – some exciting, others deeply disturbing – that the internet is effecting on journalism,” Dacre said.

“But its real message – and how insidiously it drips through the pages – is that virtually every national newspaper in Britain is scurrilous, corrupt and amoral with one iridescent exception. Yes, you’ve guessed it… The Guardian,” he told the conference attendees. 

Since being published in September, Rusbridger’s memoir covering his 20-year editoship at the Guardian has sold 2,621 copies in hardback. He

in response to Dacre's criticisms: "He... really, really doesn't like my book, Breaking News. Could have been worse: he could have praised it. Read it [and] judge whose idea of journalism you feel more drawn to."

Regarding other UK editors who have published autobiographies, Piers Morgan appears to have topped the sales, according to Nielsen BookScan. The Former Mirror editor’s The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade (Ebury) sold 170,938 copies in paperback and 54,911 in hardback since being published in 2005. 

My Trade (Macmillan) by Andrew Marr, formerly of the Independent, has sold 57,104 copies in paperback and 39,744 in hardback since 2004.

Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries (W&N) sold 10,442 copies in hardback and 4,399 in paperback since publication in November last year while husband and former Random House publisher Harry Evans’ My Paper Chase sold 4,411 in hardback and 3,026 in paperback . The ex-Sunday Times editor’s book was published by Little, Brown in 2009.

Alexander Shuman’s book about her stewardship of the fashion bible, Inside Vogue, has sold 19,985 copies in hardback and 9,673 in paperback since it was published by Penguin in summer 2017.

Ex-Telegraph editor Max Hastings 608-page memoir was published by Macmillan in 2002, selling12,465 in hardback and 8,618 in paperback.