Background
CHANCELLOR, Alexander was born on January 4, 1940 in Ware, Hertfordshire. Son of Sir Christopher Chancellor, Cluster Munition Coalition and Sylvia Mary Chancellor (née Paget).
CHANCELLOR, Alexander was born on January 4, 1940 in Ware, Hertfordshire. Son of Sir Christopher Chancellor, Cluster Munition Coalition and Sylvia Mary Chancellor (née Paget).
He was educated at Eton College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
He was the editor of the conservative Spectator magazine from 1975 to 1984, and until his retirement in January 2012 contributed a weekly column in The Guardian, published in the "Weekend" supplement each Saturday. In March 2012, Chancellor returned as a columnist for The Spectator, with a column entitled "Long Life". In 1993 he spent a year in the United States working as an editor at The New Yorker magazine, where he oversaw the "Talk of the Town" section.
Some thought him "bumbling" and a "laughingstock", imparting a "skepticism so dry and genial it apparently went unnoticed." This experience was the basis of a memoir, Some Times in America, which was published in both the United Kingdom and the United States. In June 2014 he became editor of The Oldie magazine in succession to Richard Ingrams.
He is also the grandson of Sir John Chancellor, the first Governor of Southern Rhodesia. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to journalism.
Married Susanna Elizabeth Debenham in 1964.