The Observer in the context of "Tortoise Media"

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⭐ Core Definition: The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.

In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly. In December 2024, Tortoise Media acquired the paper from the Scott Trust Limited, with the transition taking place on 22 April 2025.

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In this Dossier

The Observer in the context of Brave New World

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often used as a companion piece, or inversion counterpart to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

In 1998 and 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Brave New World has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication. It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990.

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The Observer in the context of The Guardian

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format. As of July 2021, its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134. The newspaper is available online; it lists UK, US (founded in 2011), Australian (founded in 2013), European, and International editions, and its website has sections for World, Europe, US, Americas, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Africa, New Zealand, Inequality, and Global development. It is published Monday-Saturday, though from 1993 to 2025, The Observer served as its Sunday sister paper.

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The Observer in the context of The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as The New Observer. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK (formerly News International), which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes The Times. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981.

In March 2020, The Sunday Times had a circulation of 647,622, exceeding that of its main rivals, The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer, combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, The Sunday Times retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it intends to continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sold 75% more copies than its sister paper, The Times, which is published from Monday to Saturday.

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The Observer in the context of Robert McCrum

John Robert McCrum (born 7 July 1953) is an English writer and editor who held senior editorial positions at Faber & Faber over seventeen years, followed by a long association with The Observer.

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The Observer in the context of Amnesty International

Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organization is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments". The organization has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.

AI was founded in London in 1961 by the lawyer Peter Benenson. In what he called "The Forgotten Prisoners" and "An Appeal for Amnesty", which appeared on the front page of the British newspaper The Observer, Benenson wrote about two students who toasted to freedom in Portugal and four other people who had been jailed in other nations because of their beliefs. AI's original focus was prisoners of conscience, with its remit widening in the 1970s, under the leadership of Seán MacBride and Martin Ennals, to include miscarriages of justice and torture. In 1977, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1980s, its secretary general was Thomas Hammarberg, succeeded in the 1990s by Pierre Sané. In the 2000s, it was led by Irene Khan.

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The Observer in the context of Index on Censorship

Index on Censorship is an organisation campaigning for freedom of expression. It produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association with the UK-registered charity Index on Censorship (founded as the Writers and Scholars Educational Trust), which are both chaired by the British television broadcaster, writer and former politician Trevor Phillips. The current CEO is Jemimah Steinfeld.

WSI was created by poet Stephen Spender, Oxford philosopher Stuart Hampshire, the publisher and editor of The Observer David Astor, and the writer and expert on the Soviet Union Edward Crankshaw. The founding editor of Index on Censorship was the critic and translator Michael Scammell (1972–1981), who still serves as a patron of the organisation.

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The Observer in the context of Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater OBE (born 9 April 1956) is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazine for over a decade and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthly supplement. Prior to this, Slater was a food writer for Marie Claire for five years.

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The Observer in the context of The Abolition of Britain

The Abolition of Britain: From Lady Chatterley to Tony Blair (reissued in 2018 with the subtitle From Winston Churchill to Theresa May; US subtitle: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana) is the first book by the British conservative journalist Peter Hitchens, published in 1999. It examines a period of perceived moral and cultural reform between the 1960s and New Labour's victory at the 1997 general election. Hitchens asserts that the reforms facilitated vast and radical constitutional change under Tony Blair's new government that amounted to a "slow motion coup d'état". The book was cited by Gillian Bowditch in The Times as being a major modern work to dissect "the decline in British morals and manners over the past 50 years", and identified by Andrew Marr in The Observer as "the most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works".

Hitchens's later book The Broken Compass explored the same themes, applied to socio-political events and culture in the 2000s.

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The Observer in the context of The Guardian Weekly

The Guardian Weekly is an international English-language news magazine based in London, England. It is one of the world's oldest international news publications and has readers in more than 170 countries. Editorial content is drawn from its sister publications, the British daily newspaper The Guardian and Sunday newspaper The Observer, and all three are published and owned by the Guardian Media Group.

The Guardian Weekly is currently edited by Graham Snowdon.

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