Barry Askew is a former British newspaper editor.

Askew grew up in Preston, and worked for the Lancashire Evening Post

Lancashire Evening Post

The Lancashire Evening Post is a daily newspaper based in Fulwood, a suburb of the city of Preston, Lancashire, England. According to the British Library, its first edition was published on 18 October 1886...

, winning the IPC National Press Awards Campaigning Journalist award in 1972, and soon becoming editor of the paper.

In April 1981, Askew was appointed as editor of the News of the World

News of the World

The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...

, partly on the recommendation of Harold Evans

Harold Evans

Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism...

, editor of The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

. In early December, he came into conflict with the Queen

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

 after claiming that if Princess Diana felt harassed by press photographers she should send a servant out to shop for her. At the end of the month, he left the newspaper, and spent the rest of his career in various short-term provincial posts.