Anthony Michell Howard, CBE (12 February 1934 – 19 December 2010) was a British journalist, broadcaster and writer. He was the editor of the New Statesman and The Listener and the deputy editor of The Observer. He selected the passages used in The Crossman Diaries, a book of entries taken from Richard Crossman's The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister. Early life Howard was born in London, the son of Canon (William) Guy Howard (1902–1981), a Church of England clergyman (at the time of his son's birth, priest in charge at Christ Church, Victoria Road, Kensington), and Janet Rymer (1904–1983; née Hogg). He studied at Purton Stoke School at Kintbury in Berkshire and Highgate Junior School, followed by Westminster School and Christ Church at the University of Oxford, where he read Jurisprudence. In 1954 he was chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club and, the following year, President of the Oxford Union. Howard had planned a career as a barrister, having been called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1956. Meanwhile, he was fulfilling his National service obligations in the army, during which he saw active service in the Royal Fusiliers during the Suez War. He wrote (initially unsigned) articles for the New Statesman about his reluctant involvement in the conflict, an action for which he was almost court-martialled. First posts in journalism Despite this early experience as a freelance contributor, he "stumbled" into his career as a journalist in 1958, beginning on Reynolds News as a political correspondent. Howard moved to the Manchester Guardian in 1959. The following year he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to study in the United States, though he remained on the Guardian’s staff. Howard was political correspondent of the New Statesman from 1961 until 1964. An admirer of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell during this period, he was a strong advocate of the democratic process: In January 1965 Howard joined The Sunday Times as its Whitehall correspondent reporting on the activities of senior civil servants. He saw his Whitehall brief as being in advance of the journalistic practices of that time. Cabinet Ministers were instructed by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's private secretary not to co-operate with Howard. Civil servants received similar instructions. Phillip Knightley reported a conversation with Howard in 2003 in which Howard had said Wilson "understood I was only trying to do my job but he had a job to do, too, and his