‘In February 2008, two newspapermen debated on Today, the BBC radio program that starts the day and sometimes sets the political agenda. One was Nick Davies, aGuardian reporter of the good old-fashioned kind who diligently ferrets out stories, the latest of which was “phone hacking,” by journalists and others. There had been rumors of tabloid reporters clandestinely accessing voicemails on the mobile telephones of public figures well before something happened to the cell phones of the young princes William and Harry in late 2005. Numerous messages on their cell phones and…’

Jeffrey Wheatcroft’s extensive article on ‘Dial M for Murdoch’, including background and chronology of hacking, political influence and more, can be freely accessed here at The New York Review of Books