William Percival Crozier

William Percival Crozier (born August 1, 1879 in Stanhope in County Durham , † April 16, 1944 in Manchester ) was a British journalist . From 1932 he was editor of the Manchester Guardian . In this role he succeeded Edward Taylor Scott , who was killed in a sailing accident.

Crozier was the youngest son of Elizabeth Hallimond and Reverend Richard Crozier, a Methodist priest. He received his education at the Manchester Grammar School and at Trinity College, Oxford , where he obtained a bachelor's degree in classical studies in 1900 .

After leaving Oxford, he was school principal at Knaresborough before dropping out of journalism training and in 1903 first worked for The Times and then for the Manchester Guardian . He impressed with a critical analysis of the reasons for a tariff reform and soon joined Edward Taylor Scott, who made him his gatekeeper . From 1912 he headed the news desk and from 1918 the military desk, then he headed the foreign desk. Under Scott, Crozier reorganized the Guardian's foreign intelligence service, expanded the use of photographs and maps, and introduced new content, such as a daily crossword puzzle in 1929 . He was a committed Zionist and was considered the leading advocate for the Jewish State Building in the daily press.

Crozier was appointed to the management of the Manchester Guardian and was appointed editor in April 1932 following the death of Edward Taylor Scott. In the time of Crozier's editorship fell seizure of the NSDAP in the German Reich and part of the Second World War.

In cooperation with his friend, the correspondent of the Guardian in the German Reich, Frederick Augustus Voigt , he succeeded in presenting the essence of National Socialism in a journalistically well-founded manner using the example of the censorship system at the Reich Press Conference . In June 1936 he was elected to the Liberal Party councilor.

He suffered from a gastric ulcer from the late 1930s, but was diagnosed with heart disease in 1943, from which he died.

Novels

• Letters of Pontius Pilate: Written During His Governorship of Judea to His Friend Seneca in Rome , 1928.
• The Fates are Laughing , 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ^ WP Crozier, the other Gentile Zionist, was eight years Herbert Sidebotham's (1872–1940) junior on the paper. He was a near neighbor and a close friend - Sidebotham was 'Uncle Sider' to the Crozier children. He shared his interest in military affairs and had established his reputation in the office by his sub-editing of the news of the Russo-Japanese War. He had succeeded Sidebotham as news editor at the end of 1912. Like Sidebotham, Crozier was a Manchester man who had been at Manchester Grammar School and taken a first in Greats at Oxford. Perhaps even more than Sidebotham cf. David Ayerst, Guardian; biography of a newspaper, 1971, p. 383
2. ^ Daphna Baram: Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel , Guardian Books, 2004, p. 260

predecessor	Office	successor
Edward Taylor Scott	Editor of the Guardian 1932-1944	Alfred Powell Wadsworth