Word: cudlipp
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DIED. LORD CUDLIPP, 84, sire of the modern British tabloid who ruled his Fleet Street subjects with a tart tongue and irreverent wit; in Chichester, England. A reporter at age 14 and an editor at 24, he later took charge of the Daily Mirror and shocked its sleepy circulation--and sober content--with bold headlines, pro-Labour positions (dubbing Britain "too damn smug"), prurience (he ran the first photo of a topless beauty) and pluck...
...Mountbatten of Burma, cousin of Queen Elizabeth and onetime Admiral of the Fleet; and Cecil King, now 80, former chairman of the International Publishing Corporation, Britain's largest press empire. The Sunday Times revived the story of a 1968 meeting between the two, first told by Lord Hugh Cudlipp, who was then deputy chairman of I.P.C. According to Cudlipp's 1976 autobiography, King had sought the assistance of Lord Mountbatten to mount a military coup against the faltering Labor government of then Prime Minister Harold Wilson...
...idea of the imperious King as a coup maker sounded farfetched, but there was no dispute that a meeting had taken place. King had appeared at Mountbatten's Belgravia flat accompanied by Cudlipp. Sir Solly Zuckerman, a friend of Mountbatten's, was also present when King suggested that Mountbatten head a new government after the fall of Wilson. Snapped Zuckerman: "This is treachery. I will have nothing to do with it." Then he stormed out of the room...
Indeed, in an exclusive interview with TIME'S Frank Melville in 1978, Mountbatten had given a version of the encounter that tallied with the account in Cudlipp's book. Said Mountbatten: "Cecil King came to see me, at his own request, and said would I take over the country, to which my retort was to kick him out. I asked Mr. King to leave, and he left with Cudlipp 20 seconds after Zuckerman...
...happened, King himself soon became the victim of a coup of sorts. Two days after the Mountbatten meeting, he personally penned a vitriolic anti-Wilson editorial in the Daily Mirror, an I.P.C. paper. The company's board of directors was so incensed that King was fired and Cudlipp installed as chairman...