Recent Articles

Britain Buries Her Own
(Literary Digest, 1919)

Aside from scanning and posting vast numbers of historic magazine articles, the only other activity that has heightened our sense of inner tranquility has been our various walks through British and Commonwealth World War I graveyards. They are truly unique and beautiful gardens that can be appreciated on a number of different levels and it was not surprising to learn that many of the finest aesthetic minds in Britain had a hand in their creation.


This article, printed six months after the last shot was fired, is about the Imperial War Graves Commission (now called The Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and their plans as to how the dead of the British Empire were to be interred.


Click here to read about a 1920 visit the grave of poet Rupert Brooke.

The Czar’s Paper
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

This is the story of a news daily that was published between the years 1894 and 1917 and its entire readership could be counted with one finger,the subscriber’s name was Czar Nicholas II of Russia. This unique periodical employed hundreds of correspondents (both foreign and domestic), and although only one printing of each issue was ever run, it cost the Russian taxpayers more than $40,000.00 a day to maintain.


Click here to read another article about the Czar.

David Lloyd George
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

An article that served to introduce American readers to the new British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945), who replaced the incompetent wartime leader Herbert Henry Asquith (1852 – 1928):

People had began to doubt whether or not Mr. Asquith had ‘the will to win’ the necessary determination to make all things work together to that end. There was no doubt in the case of Lloyd George. He had supported credit, he had supplied ammunition, he had inspired general confidence, he had reconciled the irreconcilable. The question arose whether or not the box seat on the coach of state should not be given to him.


The article concentrates primarily on the radical instinct and liberal leanings of Lloyd George, who is often remembered as the Prime Minister who laid the foundations of the British nanny-state.


In 1940 Lloyd George wrote an editorial in which he condemned the leaders of Europe for procrastinating rather than dealing with Hitler when Germany was still weak Click here to read it.

Lloyd George on the Nazi Blitzkrieg
(Click Magazine, 1940)

In this article, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945) lambasts the leaders of Britain and France for blundering their way into the Second World War having failed to cut Hitler off at the knees on any number of previous occasions:

It is just over twenty-one years ago that France and Britain signed the Armistice with Germany which brought to an end the bloodiest war in history. They are now fighting essentially the same struggle… It is no use keeping up the pretense that things are going well for the democratic cause. We are suffering not from one blunder, but from a series of incredible botcheries. It is a deplorable tale of incompetence and stupidity.

Lloyd George singled-out Chamberlain with particular contempt, while presenting his thoughts about Hitler and Mussolini, the German Blitzkrieg and Soviet neutrality

David Niven Returns to Hollywood
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946)

After six years of war British actor David Niven (1910 – 1983) came back to resume his rightful place among the anointed swells of Hollywood. This single page article is interesting and not only touches upon his war years but also his earliest days in North America toiling-away on a series of menial jobs.

He isn’t talkative about what happened to him during that dark period [during the war]. He says his outlook has changed some. Even the gayest and most lighthearted can’t participate in a ghastly war without some mark being left. The fight with the Nazis made David Niven conscious of other things than the drama pages.


Niven’s first post-war film roll was in the Hal Wallis production of THE PERFECT MARRIAGE, co-starring Loretta Young.

Eisenhower’s D-Day Report
(The Department of the Army, 1945)

The following is an extract from General Eisenhower‘s report on the Allied operations from June 6 through the 26 of August, 1944:

Many factors are woven into warp and woof of this great victory…One was the meticulous care in planning and preparation, another was the fact that we achieved some degree of surprise involving place, timing and strength of attack. The excellence and sufficiency of amphibious equipment, with measures for dealing with beach defenses and obstacles, was also important. In the air, the Luftwaffe has taken a fearful beating. Since June 6, 2378 German aircraft have been destroyed in the air and 1,167 on the ground…

Statistical data concerning the U.S. Army casualties in June and July of 1944 can be read in this article.

The Thinking of Buckminster Fuller
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

Bereft of all but one illustration, this five page article delves into the design philosophy of the architect Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) – who was very fond of the word dymaxion:

Fuller argues that the social function of machinery is to eliminate the unpleasant phases of life in the shortest possible space of time. Housing, or ‘shelter’ as he prefers to call it, should be, fundamentally, ‘a machine for living.’

Edgar Degas: R.I.P.
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

Some interesting postmortem thoughts and seldom heard facts concerning the life and times of Impressionist painter Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917); of particular interest was the enormous amount of money fetched at auction for the assorted content of his studio during a time of national crises in France.

Phonograph Advocate: Sir Edward Elgar
(Current Opinion, 1921)

Sir Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934), the noted composer, recently presided at the opening of the new headquarters of a gramophone company in London. Elgar is a great believer in the mechanical reproduction of music, and always conducts for records of his own works.

What musicians want, he said, is more listeners.

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