was more important than mine. He made it very plain that all conventional sources of information would remain shut until I was willing to return to the cosy but essentially sham game of being a political correspondent." Wilson is thought by journalist John Simpson to have had a preference for secrecy and to have been fearful that such a practice would give his enemies and rivals a potential outlet. Howard, however, was soon invited to become The Observer’s chief Washington correspondent, serving in the role from 1966 to 1969, later contributing a political column (1971–72). During his period in America he made regular contributions to The World at One on Radio 4. "It got to where I was almost the World at One Washington correspondent", he once remarked. He was, though, absent from his post when President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in the Presidential election of 1968, which did not help relations with David Astor, Observer editor at the time. Editorial roles As editor of the New Statesman (1972–78), succeeding Richard Crossman, whose deputy he had been (1970–72), he appointed Robin Cook as the magazine's parliamentary adviser in 1974, (Cook also contributed articles), James Fenton, Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis as literary editor in 1977. Future New Statesman editor Peter Wilby, for whom Howard was a mentor, was a staff member during this period. Under Howard's editorship the magazine published a rare non-British contributor: Gabriel García Márquez in March 1974, on the overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile the previous September. Perhaps out of a sense of balance, he featured a series of critiques of the British Left, by the magazine's former editor Paul Johnson, a drinking companion and friend of Howard's, whose political rightward drift was well advanced by then. He also employed Auberon Waugh as a columnist. Howard was unable to halt the magazine's fall in circulation, however. He then edited The Listener for two years (1979–81). Howard was deputy editor of The Observer (1981–88), where one of his journalist protégés was the journalist and (later) novelist Robert Harris, whom he appointed as the newspaper's political correspondent. His professional relationship with the editor, Donald Trelford, ultimately broke down over allegations that Trelford had allowed the newspaper's proprietor Tiny Rowland to interfere in editorial content. After leaving The Observer, following an ill-fated editorial coup against Trelford, he was a reporter on Newsnight and Panorama