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Cecil Harmsworth King

Cecil Harmsworth King (20 February 1901 – 17 April 1987) was chairman of the International Publishing Corporation from 1963 to 1968 and a director at the Bank of England from 1965 to 1968.

Biography[]

Cecil Harmsworth King was born in Totteridge, Hertfordshire, England on 20 February 1901, and he was raised in Ireland in an Irish Protestant family. In 1937, he partnered with Hugh Cudlipp and turned the Daily Mirror into the world's largest selling daily paper. From 1963 to 1968, he served as Chairman of the International Publishing Corporation, owning 200 papers and magazines, including the Daily Mirror. In 1968, he participated in a bizarre meeting with Louis Mountbatten and proposed that Harold Wilson's government be overthrown and replaced by a temporary administration headed by Mountbatten. King then had the Daily Mirror call for Wilson to be overthrown in an extra-parliamentary action, leading to the board of the IPC forcing his resignation due to breach of procedure. He moved to Dublin in 1974, and he died there in 1987.

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