Online conference focuses on national identity in magazines

The Centre for Design History at Brighton University in running a magazine conference on 23 March – 5 April. Future States: Modernity and national identity in popular magazines, 1890-1945 includes academic presenters from 15 countries with free access for registrants to keynote addresses, panels, Q&As, abstracts, notice boards and contacts lists. 

The programme has yet to be published, but the conference theme is being developed in 35 talks on print cultures across the world. Topics include the Soviet satirical magazine Krokodil, Der Rote Stern (The Red Star), the weekly illustrated supplement of the German communist party daily paper, and the populist illustrated periodicals of fascist Italy published by Rizzoli. Panels are set to explore the magazine cultures of North America and Europe, Britain and Australia, Mexico and Peru, Turkey, Iran, and the Soviet Turkic states.

The presentations are being recorded in advance, and will be published over the two weeks of the conference and participants can contribute to discussions. Afterwards, all the material will be maintained as a permanent online record.

In what looks to be an interesting experiment, Future States aims to be a ‘nearly carbon-neutral conference’.

 

 

What does a Bolshevik look like?

Portrait of a ‘frenzied fanatic’ Bolshevik by Charles Sargeant Jagger on the cover of War Illustrated in January 1919

War Illustrated magazine left its readers in no doubt where its stood on the prospects of Russia in the control of the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution. This ranting maniac was portrayed on the weekly magazine’s front cover for 11 January, 1919, by CS Jagger. Inside, Sir Sidney Low wrote about the revolutionaries as ‘frenzied fanatics’.

I take this illustration to be by Charles Sargeant Jagger, one of the pre-eminent sculptors of the early 20th century. He served with the Artists’ Rifles in the First World War and created several war memorials – most notably the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner (1925). There is a British Pathe film of Jagger at work.

Sir Sidney Low was a journalist during the war and edited the wireless service of the Ministry of Information. He had been knighted the year before.

War Illustrated‘s editor at Amalgamated Press was John Hammerton, one of Alfred Harmsworth’s most successful editors. War Illustrated was relaunched as New Illustrated after the war.

 

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To see almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out for my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design

 

 

 

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Lord Kitchener – the life of his image. Part 5

HMS Hampshire sank on 5 June 1916 on her way to Russia, taking Lord Kitchener down with her. Kitchener was the face of the Empire and had led the biggest recruiting campaign in modern history, a campaign that also changed the nature of propaganda, advertising and graphic design. This is the fifth post this weeek based based on images from Kitchener Wants You, a book I have written with Martyn Thatcher that examines the story of the man, the famous poster and how that image has retained its hold on the imagination of people across the world.

Leete’s image today

Every day, someone, somewhere, makes use of Alfred Leete’s 112-year-old drawing of Kitchener. Above is an example from this week’s Private Eye magazine, making a pun on ‘EU’ and ‘you’ with ‘Your country doesn’t need EU’ as part of its EU referendum coverage. The wording also refers back to one of the early subversions of the image – the Daily Mail ridiculing Harold Macmillan, the prime minister, with the words: ‘But does your country need you’ (1961).

And it’s not just the press. In the village of Harkstead in Suffolk today, I walked past a reproduction of one of the First World War posters with the wording: ‘Your Country Needs You … to help repaint the village playground.’ From Britain’s leading satirical magazine to a village noticeboard, it’s difficult to escape that iconic Kitchener image. The images below give a hint of the reason why.

In summary: The magazine cover that started it all
	Alfred Leete’s London Opinion cover in September 1914
The idea of the recruiting poster catches on across the globe
	One of three recruiting posters that used Leete’s image in 1914-15	US artist James Montgomery Flagg cover for Leslie’s (6 July 1916)	US posters used Flagg’s artwork once the US entered the war in 1917
The image is revived in WW2 and continues to be used
	The Hungarian editor of Picture Post uses Leete’s image in 1940		Russian poster from WW2: ‘You. How have you helped the front?’
Leete’s image sparks many ideas
Big Brother poster from a film of George Orwell’s book 1984, which was published in 1949	Punch deplores the way local civil servants are treated in the Sudan (1955)	Daily Telegraph marks its centenary and chooses Leete’s artwork as an iconic image of the past 100 years	Biography of an imperialist by Philip Magnus with an Osbert Lancaster caricature	Daily Mail ridicules Harold Macmillan, the prime minister (1961): ‘But does your country need you’
The stern pointing image is subverted in Britain and then the US
2016 Stanford version of the 1962 Joan Littlewood play Oh What a Lovely War	A symbol of Carnaby St in the Swinging Sixties	Girl power 1967-style on cover of young women’s magazine Honey	Black activists in the US portray Uncle Sam as trying to wipe out their race (1968)	From the late 1960s, Vietnam War protestors subverted the imagery. This is from 1971
Leete’s image continues to resonate to this day
First army campaign aimed at recruiting officers from ethnic minorities  (1997)	Lethbridge-Stewart fronts Dr Who magazine:  ‘We want you as a Who recruit!’ (2002)	Financial crisis: Economist cover of US Treasury secretary Henry ‘Hank’ Paulson (2008)	Radio Times has used Leete’s idea for Lord Sugar, Robbie Williams and Jeremy Paxman	Uncle Sam – arch symbol of capitalism – is  used by the Karl Marx library in London (2016)

READ THE BOOK: Kitchener Wants You by Martyn Thatcher and Anthony Quinn

Lord Kitchener – the legend lives on. Part 4

HMS Hampshire sank on 5 June 1916 on her way to Russia, taking Lord Kitchener down with her. Kitchener was the face of the Empire and had led the biggest recruiting campaign in modern history, a campaign that also changed the nature of propaganda, advertising and graphic design. This is the fourth post this weeek based based on images from Kitchener Wants You, a book I have written with Martyn Thatcher that examines the story of the man, the famous poster and how that image has retained its hold on the imagination of people across the world.

Picture Post magazine cover for the week of 1 June 1940

Leete’s Kitchener image is revived

Alfred Leete’s Kitchener image for London Opinion was donated to the Imperial War Museum, where it was only catalogued as a poster. Although the image appeared in some exhibitions after the war, it was not regarded as a great example of poster art, unlike the wartime posters of people such as Frank Brangwyn, Gerald Spencer Pryse and Edward McKnight Kauffer.

When the Second World War broke out, conscription was brought in immediately and the British government decided to use more subtle techniques for poster campaigns. So, there was no place for Leete’s image, although a different tack was taken in the US, which did re-use James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam version of the Kitchener artwork. The Russians also adopted the Leete imagery, but with the image of a painting soldier.

However, the most famous photo magazine of the era, Picture Post, did feel Leete’s artwork was worth dusting off. It was carried on the front of the popular weekly, dated 1 June 1940. It not only marked the week of Kitchener’s death, but was also the week of the BEF’s retreat from Dunkirk.

From then on, Kitchener’s face became a frequent reference, for cartoonists, for people and organisations marking iconic events in the 20th century, and for just about anybody wanting to draw attention to anything.

 Attitudes to Kitchener change

1958 biography of Kitchener by Philip Magnus

A 1958 biography of Kitchener by Philip Magnus portrayed him as an arch imperialist, out of touch with modern values. The April 1955 issue of Lilliput magazine described Kitchener as Britain’s Big Brother, an ironic comparison given that the WWI Kitchener posters probably inspired George Orwell’s descriptions of the character in 1984.

This period very much sees the end of empire as country after country is given independence or fights against British control. Furthermore, Britons were adopting a less deferential attitude towards the establishment, which was soon seen in theatre and the satire boom as well as in the press.

Joan Littlewood’s 1962 play Oh What a Lovely War drew on the Alan Clark book The Donkeys to portray the First World War from the point of view of the frontline soldier. It made great use of Leete’s imagery, both onstage and for publicity, and shook up both British attitudes and theatre itself. It was shown in New York and made into a film. It’s a play that resonates to this day.

Kitchener in Carnaby Street

I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet

The mid-1960s saw Kitchener’s face in a different context: fronting the fashionable boutique I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet and becoming a symbol of Carnaby Street and the Swinging Sixties. Lord Kitchener’s Valet sold secondhand uniforms, which were taken up by pop stars such as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

The shop sign by Pat Hartnett, which is in the V&A, was inspired by Leete’s Kitchener image.

Later in the decade, it was protesters against a contemporary conflict – the Vietnam War – who turned to Leete’s imagery, though it was the James Montgomery Flagg variant.

Leete’s image is subverted

Campaigning groups in the US took the pointing Uncle Sam from the Flagg artwork and diverted its meaning for their own purposes. There was Uncle Sam as a death skeleton, bandaged up and demanding relief, and as an aggressive recruiter of young black men seeking human fodder from the city ghettoes for an imperialist, overseas war.

Black activists in the US portray Uncle Sam as trying to wipe out their race (1968)

From the late 1960s, Vietnam War protestors subverted the imagery. This is from 1971

Uncle Sam portrayed as a death skeleton tempting recruits to fight in the Vietnam War

Next: The modern images

 

Lord Kitchener – a mysterious death. Part 3

When HMS Hampshire sank on 5 June 1916 on her way to Russia, taking Lord Kitchener down with her, Britain – and a large part of the rest of the world – was in a state of disbelief. Although Kitchener had become isolated from his cabinet colleagues, he was the face of the Empire and had led the biggest recruiting campaign in modern history, a campaign that also changed the nature of propaganda, advertising and graphic design. This is the third post this weeek based based on images from Kitchener Wants You, a book I have written with Martyn Thatcher.

London, Paris, New York: how three papers mourned Kitchener
Daily Mirror of June 1916 with a Kitchener memorial issue	Cover of Le Petit Journal with a colour portrait (25 June 1916)	New York Times reports Kitchener’s death on its front page

How the press reported Kitchener’s death

News of the death of Britain’s war lord quickly spanned the globe and it was front page news from London to Paris, to Delhi to New York. Soon, conspiracy theories emerged: that Kitchener had survived; that the government had him murdered; that he had reached Russia and changed his name to Stalin. A former Boer spy emerged to claim he had been on the ship and guided the U-boat. There were even reports in the Orkneys that troops had prevented locals trying to rescue survivors.

These stories have inspired conspiracy theorists to this day. As late as last week, the Daily Mirror ran a story: ‘Death of WW1 poster icon Lord Kitchener remains shrouded in conspiracy theories 100 years on‘ by Warren Manger (4 June, pages 26 and 27).

Pictorial Weekly on the conspiracy theories in March 1934

Lilliput revisits the theories in May 1955

French magazine Histoire on the mystery in 1981

Tomorrow: The legend lives on

 

Lord Kitchener – the recruitment posters. Part 2

Sunday saw the start of a string of events this week to mark the centenary of the death of Lord Kitchener, whose face has become a global icon since he was depicted on the front cover of London Opinion magazine in a famous illustration by Alfred Leete.

Kitchener Wants You, a book I have written with Martyn Thatcher, tracks Kitchener’s career and examines how he was portrayed by magazines and the press from his rise to fame in the Sudan to the present day. This week, I’ll do a post a day based on images from the book – many of which are rarely seen – and some I’ve discovered only recently.

Three images of Kitchener from 1914 and 1915
A smiling Kitchener on the cover of Home Chat in 1915	Kitchener on the cover of Illustrated War News in June 1914	How the US magazine Collier’s depicted Kitchener

Alfred Leete’s painting of Kitchener

Alfred Leete drew the London Opinion magazine cover at the top of the page, which was picked up as an image and used for at least three recruitment posters. Leete was one of the leading black-and-white artists of his day, and produced covers, cartoons and illustrations for London Opinion alongside Bert Thomas (who beame famous for his ‘Arf a Mo, Kaiser’ advert for the Weekly Dispatch tobacco fund). Leete’s Kitchener artwork ended up in the Imperial War Museum and has been reproduced in many books, though usually only credited as a poster, or sometimes, mistakenly, as an advertisement. It is worth examining the artwork at the IWM, which has been digitised to its full size and can be examined in detail online.

There were many other depictions of Kitchener, as shown above, but Leete’s is the one that most people remember.

Martyn Thatcher explores how Kitchener became a poster

All of the artists and magazines chose to portray a younger Kitchener – he was 64 when the war broke out, but most used older photographs, in the case of Leete from one dating back 20 years to about 1895. Martyn Thatcher has explored how the mage was produced and in the process did the above design merging a photograph into Leete’s illustration. Note in particular how Leete built up the moustache and opened the eye. The collar is also simplifed so as not to detract from the face.

Part 1: Kitchener – the legend remembered

Tomorrow: the reaction to Kitchener’s death

Lord Kitchener – the legend remembered. Part 1

Sunday saw the start of a string of events this week to mark the centenary of the death of Lord Kitchener, whose face has become a global icon since he was depicted on the front cover of London Opinion magazine in a famous illustration by Alfred Leete.

Hundreds of newspaper stories appeared over the weekend about Kitchener, all tagged to the centenary. Several books have been launched or republished, and having just written Kitchener Wants You with Martyn Thatcher, I now find it near impossible to walk down a street without seeing the illustration or one of its many derivatives.

Kitchener Wants You tracks Kitchener’s career and examines how he was portrayed by magazines and the press from his rise to fame in the Sudan to the present day. This week, I’ll do a post a day based on images from the book – many of which are rarely seen – and some I’ve discovered only recently.

Out of Africa: the hero emerges

Kitchener on the cover of a part work about the Boer War in 1900

Kitchener made his name in North Africa, regaining control lost in an uprising by the Madhi that had resulted in the killing of General Gordon. Over two years, in a campaign that was notable for Kitchener’s brilliance in logistics, the Sirdar (commander-in-chief of Egypt’s forces) added a million square miles to the empire and ultimately massacred the forces of the Madhi’s successor, the Kalifa, Abdulla, at Omdurman.

Some 10,000 Dervishes were killed against a loss of just 48 British troops. It was an army armed with swords comping up against military technology in the form of the Maxim machine gun and modern artillery. However, there was controversy after the desecration of the Madhi’s tomb, and tales that Kitchener wwanted to turn the skull into an ink well.

Yet the country went wild with praise and Kitchener’s movements were closely followed. The press christened him ‘The Avenger of Gordon’.

After the battle, Kitchener sent a telegraph to a colleague in Cairo: ‘The effect of having killed 30,000 Dervishes is that I have 300,000 women on my hands, and I should be much obliged if you could instruct me how to dispose of them.’ His reward was to be made a baron and £30,000. That was in 1898. The next year saw him in South Africa, fighting the Boers. He signed a peace treaty in 1902, being rewarded with a viscounty and £50,000.

Surrounded by women: Kitchener at a garden party

But the problem of being chased by women did not go away, as this detail from a 1902 photograph of the six-foot-two-tall Lord Kitchener at a Kensington Garden party shows. The caption read: ‘Our batchelor general Lord Kitchener – weaponless, beleaguered and retreat cut off.’

Kitchener has been described as a jackdaw collector of fine china, and a dedicated  gardener. He appears to have ben tongue-tied among politicians and was ‘either very stupid or very clever’ according to Mrs Asquith, the wife of the prime minister.

The next 12 years were spent in India and then Egypt as consul-gereneral. He was on his way back there on August 3 1914 when he was hauled off a Channel ferry on the orders of Asquith and appointed secretary of state for war.

Tomorrow: Leete and his famous Kitchener portrait

I peed on my shoes laughing before Pravda landed on the streets of Thatcher’s Britain

The first issue of Pravda monthly in English in 1986

It’s 29 years ago and the latest monthly magazine to hit the news-stands is an English-language version of Pravda – the newspaper of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The 44-page, A4 magazine proudly boasts it was founded by Lenin in 1911, on the 5th of May to be precise, and announces its battle cry ‘Workers of the world unite’.

This was still the Cold War. Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s prime minister and Mikhail Gorbachev was the Russian president facing up to Ronald Reagan in the US. A headline inside, ‘How Star Wars flouts the law’,  attacks the US strategic defence initiative with its bluster about energy weapons mounted on satellite systems. BBC Radio 4 is presently serialising Thatcher’s official biography by arch Tory Charles Moore, a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Spectator magazine, where he writes the weekly Notes column.

Besides Star Wars weapons and the Chernobyl fallout (also the subject of a recent Radio 4 series), it was the era of my favourite piece of grafitti, seen on the wall of the otherwise spotless men’s loo of the French House pub, underneath the pavement in Soho’s Dean Street. In 1984, in the run-up to the election battle against Walter Mondale, someone had scrawled: ‘Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you, when your country needs you most?’ Not a Reagan fan then, but the former actor won by a landslide. I peed on my shoes laughing.

Badges from the Pravda title

The Pravda masthead shows two Lenin badges and the hammer and sickle in front of what I take to be the battleship Potemkin –  scene of the failed mutiny of 1905 made famous by Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film.

Nowadays, you can read Pravda on the web.

To see almost 500 magazine covers and pages, look out my book, A History of British Magazine Design, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design

Japanese airmen fly Kamikaze into Britain

Popular Flying magazine (June 1937 issue) showing the two Japanese airmen at Croydon aerodrome at the end of their record-breaking flight from Japan

 

 

 

 

 

Britain and Japan were allies during the first world war. British shipyards had built most of Tokyo’s fleet at the turn of the century, and they were still allies in the 1930s. So, the arrival of two Japanese airmen at Croydon airfield at the end of a record-breaking 10,000 mile goodwill flight from Japan to mark the May coronation of King George VI was a cause for celebration in 1937. Popular Flying magazine – edited by ‘Biggles’ author WE Johns – set the tone in its June issue:

The end of a great flight. Masaki Jinuma [Masaaki Iinuma] and Kenji Tsukagoshi, the Japanese airmen, arriving at Croydon in their delightfully named aircraft ‘Divine Wind,’ after flying the 10,000 miles from Tokio in 94 hours

‘Divine Wind’ does indeed sound charming, but to today’s eyes, the Japanese for the name on the side of the aircraft loses its delight – Kamikaze.

The word was originally used in Japanese folk lore with reference to the supposed divine wind that blew on a night in August 1281, destroying the navy of the invading Mongols.

In 1937,  Japan was again at war – with China – and that conflict would merge into the second world war after Japan’s attacks on Malaysia and Pearl Harbor in 1941. in October 1944, fanatical kamikaze suicide pilots began deliberately crashing their aircraft into allied ships in the Pacific. In all, 47 Allied vessels  were sunk by kamikaze attacks, and about 300 damaged for the loss of 3,000 kamikaze pilots. About one in six planes hit a target.

A Japanese website has a painting by Shigeo Koike of the original record-breaking Kamikaze, a Mitsubishi Ki-15 Karigane, which served as a reconnaissance plane and light bomber. Parts of the text read:

The exploit led to international fame for the aircraft and was accomplished between 6th and 9th April 1937. The flight was timed to mark the coronation celebrations on 12 May. The plane was the type’s second prototype, which was given the civil designation of J-BAAI for the occasion and named Kamikaze. With Masaaki Iinuma as pilot and Kenji Tsugakoshi as navigator, the aircraft flew from Tachikawa to London in 94 hours, 17 minutes and 56 seconds, covering 15,353 km in a net flying time of 51 hours 17 minutes and 23 seconds, at an average speed of 160.8 km/h. The flight was sponsored by the daily paper Asahi-Shinbun.

Iinuma and Tsugakoshi returned to Japan and later fought in the war against the Allies. Iinuma died on 11 December 1941 when he walked into a spinning aircraft propeller at Phnom Penh airfield in French Indochina (now Cambodia). The incident is supposed to have happened just after he had heard news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. That attack had taken place on Sunday, 7 December and on the 11th Germany and Italy declared war on the US. The Japanese had attacked British forces just before Pearl Harbor by landing on the coast of Malaya and bombing Singapore and Hong Kong. Tsukagoshi disappeared while on a flight over the Indian Ocean in 1943.

The Kamikaze was on display at the Ashai Shimbun headquarters in Tokyo in 1944 when the building was hit by a bomb and the airplane was destroyed.

Popular Flying magazine was published on the 22nd of each month by C. Arthur Pearson from its offices in Covent Garden, Tower House in Southampton St, just off The Strand in London. It cost 6d an issue. Pearson’s magazines were owned by Newnes, which later merged into IPC. The printer was Williams, Lea & Co at Clifton House in Worship Street. Other articles described aerodrome holidays, flying over Britain and air holidays abroad. The cover is by Howard Leigh, who illustrated many of the Biggles books.

Popular Flying magazine cover June 1937

 

 

 

 

 

Hearst in £574m deal over Elle rights

US group Hearst – owner of NatMags in the UK – is to pay French media group Lagardere €651m for control of its international magazines, including UK arm Hachette Filipacchi, Press Gazette reports.

The agreement includes Elle (in the US, Russia & Ukraine, Italy, Spain, the UK, China, Japan, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Mexico, Taiwan, Canada and Germany) among 102 Lagardère print titles in 15 countries as well as 50 websites and mobile and tablet apps.

Other titles include Woman’s Day, Car & Driver and Cycle World in the US, Red in the UK and Holland.

Lagardère will continue to own the Elle trademark and receive royalties. Before the deal, Lagardère was the largest magazine publisher in the world. Hearst will strengthen its international portfolio against Vogue publisher Conde Nast.

NatMags profile
Hachette Filipacchi profile
Lagardère website
Hearst website
Conde Nast profile