Familial propriety
When Lord Rothermere finally gave up the cares of chairmanship at Associated Newspapers, it was the general consensus in
Fleet Street that his departure marked the beginning of the end of the Daily Mail. The
argument was brutal, and went thus: as
long as Lord Rothermere was in charge, the Mail-Evening News could not do any kind of wife-swapping or other deal with the. Express-Evening Standard, because of familial propriety. Since Max Aitken, the son of Beaverbrook, quite definitely wasn't going to sell out, or anything similar, to Lord Rothermere, and since Rothermere, the son of Harmsworth, wasn't going to sell out to Aitken, Rothermere had to go, and finally went (leaving behind, so it's gossiped, as a kind of farewell present, bought for (40.000 with his own private money, the rights to Papillon).
The general idea current around spots like El Vino was that the Hon Vere Harmsworth, son and heir of Rothermere, would prove altogether more amenable to whatever deals
were being cooked up: in other words, that one way or another the Express would end up with the Mail.
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