Book Review: Mail Men: The Unauthorised Story of The Daily Mail, Adrian Addison

As one of the UK’s biggest Brexit cheerleaders, and the owner of the world’s most successful website, the Daily Mail has become an unlikely major player in the 21st century media landscape.

Former BBC journalist Adrian Addison’s history of the paper unfortunately falls prey to a failing that bedevils many a biography. While his level of research is commendable, the focus on the publication’s early days can often be quite tedious. It’s only when the book gets to the part that most of us are interested in – the Mail’s current guise under the editorship of the famously explosive Paul Dacre – that it really kicks into gear.

From that point, it proves riveting, with Addison laying bare the publication’s fractious internal politics, as well as the shamelessly sensationalist formula that has driven its success. For all its faults, Mail Men is undoubtedly one of the non-fiction books of the year.