Tindle Newspapers Ltd.

Now in the Newspaper Society's list of the 10 biggest UK publishers, Tindle Newspapers is still helmed by Sir Ray Tindle, who began the group with £300 demob money given to soldiers at the end of the Second World War and was knighted in 1994 for his services to the newspaper industry.He started with a weekly paper in Tooting, south London, with a circulation of 700. Through launches and acquisitions the group now has more than 220 titles, with an audited weekly circulation of more than 1.4 million and turnover above £50m.

Sir Ray says any success he may have achieved can be attributed to a dedicated staff led in recent years by Brian Doel and Wendy Craig and 30 superb general managers running their newspapers locally. Sir Ray illustrates his ultra-local philosophy by recounting to the industry trade newspaper, Press Gazette, his rescue of the Tenby Observer in 1978 after reading in the Daily Telegraph that the paper, which had been renamed the West Wales Observer in an attempt to reach a wider market, had ceased publication.