DC Thomson

The Courier, later a DC Thomson title, was launched on September 20, 1816 as a Friday paper often of only two pages; it appeared weekly or twice weekly for nearly 50 years and became a daily in 1861.⁠[1]

The Thomson family business began in the early 19th century with William Thomson’s shipping interests, turned to publishing around the mid-19th century, and bought The Dundee Courier in 1886.⁠[2]

D.C. Thomson & Company Limited was incorporated as a private limited company on March 27, 1905, with company number SC005830, a registered office at Courier Buildings in Dundee, and newspaper publishing as its registered business.⁠[3]

In October 1914 the company started The Post Sunday Special, a supplement to its Saturday title The Post that listed soldiers killed in the First World War; the first Sunday Post went on sale on January 19, 1919.⁠[4]

The comic strip The Broons first appeared in March 1936 and has run weekly in The Sunday Post; its annual was first published in 1939 and alternates with the Oor Wullie annual.⁠[5]

The company published the first Beano in 1938, and the character Dennis made his first appearance in 1951; DC Thomson calls Beano one of the most recognisable British brands of all time.⁠[6]

In 1952 a dispute linked to D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd. reached London’s City Press: the unions insisted on deleting an article supporting Thomson’s case, the proprietors refused on grounds of press freedom, and printing stopped. On May 9 the Minister of Labour announced in the House of Commons that the union had brought about a full resumption of work and that a Court of Inquiry would be set up under the Industrial Courts Act 1919.⁠[7]

The Northwood Charitable Trust was established in 1972, originally funded by a Thomson family member who donated his shares in the family business; it funds arts and heritage, education, health, and poverty-related causes, and its current trustees are family members.⁠[8]

In 1987 the company bought a 30% share in the Waterstones bookshop chain.⁠[2]

The genealogy service Findmypast began in 1965 as Title Research; in 2007 it was renamed Findmypast and acquired by DC Thomson, partnered with the British Library in 2010 to digitise newspaper holdings, and now says it holds more than four billion family records.⁠[9]

The women’s magazine Stylist launched on October 7, 2009 as the first freemium title for women; now a DC Thomson brand, it says it reaches four million women in the UK each month.⁠[10]

In February 2023 DC Thomson announced about 300 redundancies and the closure of 26 titles, including 20 former Aceville magazines and six Dundee-based magazines such as Living and Shout, to close a gap of about £10m. Rebecca Miskin, chief executive of the media business, called the changes “vital to set us up to thrive in the future”; the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) called them “brutal cuts.”⁠[11]

In the year to March 31, 2023 group revenue was flat at £161m and the company made a pre-tax loss of £161.5m (against a pre-tax profit of £7.2m in 2022), £149.9m of it from a fall in the value of financial assets; it paid shareholders dividends totalling £24.9m and had around 1,300 employees.⁠[12]

In the year to March 31, 2024 recurring trading revenue fell 6% to £134.5m, but pre-tax profit recovered to £93.8m, of which £92m came from financial assets; the average headcount was 1,314.⁠[13]

D.C. Thomson & Company Holdings Limited was incorporated in Scotland on August 20, 2025 (company number SC859647) at the same registered address as D.C. Thomson & Company Limited and is registered as a holding company.⁠[14]

In the year to March 31, 2025 group revenue rose from £154m to £184m, including £29m from Meadowside Insurance, a subsidiary set up that year to reinsure the group’s defined benefit pension liability; pre-tax profit was £31m.⁠[15]

From March 20, 2026 D.C. Thomson & Company Holdings Limited has been registered as the person with significant control of D.C. Thomson & Company Limited, owning 75% or more of its shares and voting rights and holding the right to appoint or remove directors.⁠[16]

The current directors of D.C. Thomson & Company Limited are Christopher Harold William Thomson (from October 1, 1995), Alan Richard Finden Hall (from May 2, 2011), David Howard Eric Thomson (from April 1, 2014), and Benjamin John Howard Gray and John Sidney Thomson (both from April 1, 2022); Peter McCall has been company secretary since April 1, 2026.⁠[17]

DC Thomson Capital is the company’s private capital arm, focusing on the future and security of food and nutrition and of natural resources.⁠[18]

DC Thomson: Official website: https://www.dcthomson.co.uk/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]