ANDREW WARREN'S LIFE & TIMES

TALK BY ANDREW WARREN “MY LIFE AND TIMES” 29 APRIL 2015

The tile of Andrew’s introductory talk was “From Paste-Up to Guide Book” which reflected his career journey from 1967 to 2012 in the publishing world. He explained that he was a local lad and his first love on leaving school was painting and art. This led him to Art College, from which he graduated in 1967. His first job was in advertising, where he had to learn the finer points of “pasting up”, which refers to a method of creating or laying out publication pages that predates the use of the now-standard computerized page design used in desktop publishing. How things have moved on!

Andrew was not particularly taken by his starter salary, since it barely covered his train fare and so he later moved into publishing. This took him into the world of “Country Life”, “She” and “Harpers and Queen”. It was this latter publication that took on the might of “Vogue” and launched the highly successful “Sloane Ranger Handbook”. In 1984, Andrew was appointed Publisher of the “SHE” magazine and repositioned the title to appeal to the life-style of women who had to juggle every aspect of their busy lives.

Then in 1989, he spotted the onset of the Margaret Thatcher home ownership revolution. This led to the launch of “House Beautiful” which remains a successful publication to this day. However, Andrew’s talents were soon spotted and he joined the Daily Mail Group as Deputy MD of Harmsworth Magazines. It was here that he first encountered “Johansens’ Hotel Guides”, expanding them from just GB&Ireland to a global brand in 56 countries. The joy for Andrew was that he was able to visit all these exotic locations, although he discovered that so much travel meant that he sometimes did not know which day it was. In 2001, the titles were purchased by Conde Nast and Andrew continued in his role as Managing Director, a post which he filled until 2012.

Andrew is a Freeman of the City of London and is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has a love of classic cars and still enjoys his painting. He has been married to Ros for 40 years and has two children, Joanna and Christopher (who manages events and conferences for the Daily Telegraph) and has two grandchildren. .

We welcome Andrew to the Club and trust that he will enjoy a fruitful time as a Rotarian.

Roger Wyborn