Marxists, feminists – and Olympians: the most dazzling Guardian writers over 200 years

The Guardian has attracted all manner of eccentrics, characters and social pioneers, from suffragettes to literary giants

What is the golden thread that links today's Guardian journalists with those of the 1820s? It takes imagination to summon up the atmosphere of the paper's beginnings, a small-scale but bold enterprise upon which Tory journalists looked with contempt", as a contemporary onlooker recalled. John Edward Taylor was the paper's proprietor, founder, leader writer and reporter. He would typeset his own articles directly from his shorthand notes, recalled his partner, the reporter Jeremiah Garnett. Then he'd help with the manual labour of the press, and lend a hand with distribution.