War Journalism & the Shaping of the Twentieth Century

Called the "King of Correspondents" Henry W. Nevinson (1856-1941) captured the political zeitgeist of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Covering conflicts across the globe, the British war correspondent commented on war in Greece, the Siege of Ladysmith, the aftermath of revolution in Russia in 1905-6 and the tragedy at Gallipoli, helping to shape understanding of world affairs at the time. He also campaigned for rights in Angola, Ireland and India. At home he was a strenuous advocate of women's suffrage. Nevinson was the first to report sympathetically on Germany's devastation after the First World War. In the 1920s he accompanied Ramsay MacDonald on the first visit of a British Prime Minister to an American President. Although courting the establishment, Nevinson cultivated controversy as a rebel. Yet he remained a highly admired journalist and was a vivid and acute observer who wrote exquisite prose. Drawing on Nevinson's private diaries which span nearly 50 years, Angela V. John captures, for the first time, the story of a figure whose perspectives whether on the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East or the United States, illuminate many of the conflicts which resonate in today's uncertain society.