Sunday Pictorial
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| Type | Weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | Trinity Mirror |
| Editor | Lloyd Embley |
| Founded | 1915 |
| Political alignment | Labour |
| Headquarters | One Canada Square, London, United Kingdom |
| Circulation | 620,861 (as of December 2016) |
| ISSN | 9975-9950 |
| OCLC number | 436610738 |
| Website | mirror.co.uk |
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. In 2016 it had an average weekly circulation of 620,861 Competing closely with other papers, in July 2011, on the second weekend after the closure of the News of the World, more than 2,000,000 copies sold, the highest level since January 2000.
The paper launched as the Sunday Pictorial on 14 March 1915.
Lord Rothermere – who owned the paper – introduced the Sunday Pictorial to the British public with the idea of striking a balance between socially responsible reporting of great issues of the day and sheer entertainment.
Although the newspaper has gone through many refinements in its near 100-year history those original core values are still in place today.
Ever since 1915, the paper has continually published the best and most revealing pictures of the famous and the infamous, and reported on major national and international events.
The first editor of the Sunday Pictorial, or the Sunday Pic as it was commonly known, was F.R Sanderson.
His launch edition led with three stories on the front page, two of which reported from the front line of the war: “THE TASK OF THE RED CROSS” and “ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF A BIG GUN”.
From day one the paper was a huge success and within six months of launch the Sunday Pictorial was selling more than one million copies.
One of the reasons for this early success was due to a series of articles written by Winston Churchill. In 1915, Churchill, disillusioned with government, resigned from the Cabinet. The articles he then wrote for the Sunday Pictorial attracted such high levels of interest that sales lifted by 400,000 copies every time his stories appeared.
A further reason for the paper’s success was its political influence. As a popular paper that always spoke its mind, the Sunday Pictorial struck a chord with millions.
Sport was also a key ingredient of the Sunday Pictorial's success. Football, even then, made it onto the front pages, and for many of the same reasons it does today: WEMBLEY STADIUM STORMED BY EXCITED CUP FINAL CROWDS dominates a front page from 1923.
Although the paper’s early life started with a flourish, by the mid-1930s its success began to flounder. That, however, all changed when the editorship was given to 24-year-old Hugh Cudlipp in 1937. Within three years of taking over he saw the circulation of the paper rise to more than 1,700,000 by the time he went to fight in World War II in 1940.
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