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British Online Archives (BOA) presents Talking History, the podcast in which we explore the past from a variety of angles and perspectives. Throughout this podcast series, we talk to historians and specialists working in related fields about their research. Together, we will delve into some of the most significant themes, events, and movements in history.
Intro: Intro music.
Welcome to Talking History with
British Online Archives, the
podcast in which we explore the
past from a variety of angles
and perspectives. British Online
Archives is an academic
publisher and digital repository
of historical source material
based in the UK, and we work
closely with academics, museum
professionals, and heritage
organisations to curate primary
source collections for students
and researchers alike.
Throughout this podcast series,
we will talk to historians and
specialists working in related
fields about their research.
Together, we will delve into
some of the most significant
themes, events, and movements in
history.
Nathaniel: I'm Nathaniel
Andrews, Senior Editor here at
BOA and in this episode, I speak
to Adrian Bingham, Professor of
Modern British History at the
University of Sheffield. For
nearly 20 years, Adrian has been
researching the cultural history
of modern Britain, with a
particular emphasis on the
British press. He has written
numerous articles and books in
this field, such as Gender,
Modernity, and the Popular Press
in Interwar Britain; Family
Newspapers? Sex, Private Life,
and the British Popular Press,
1918–1978 and most recently,
United Kingdom, published by
Policy Press in 2022. I met up
with Adrian in Sheffield back in
October, where we discussed a
wide range of topics, including
the rise of print media in
Britain in the 19th century, the
relationship between the media
and politics, and the role of
British periodicals in the
construction of gender. It was a
fascinating and highly
informative interview, and I
hope you enjoy it as much as I
did.
Adrian, thanks very much for
letting us use your office for
this interview.
Adrian: You're very welcome. I'm
pleased to be doing this.
Nathaniel: I hope it's fair to
say that the majority of your
research focuses on the history
of print culture in Britain, so
the history of the British
media. And there's lots that we
can talk about, and I have quite
a few questions written down, so
we'll get through as much as we
can in the time that we have.
But I thought just to start us
off, could you maybe tell our
listeners a little bit about
what first drew you to this
field. And why, why is the
history of print media important
in the wider history of Britain?
Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. I've
been doing this for more than 20
years now, which is quite scary
to think. Initially, I was
interested in looking at gender
identities after the First World
War, and I was trying to find a
way of exploring those
identities. And initially I
thought about looking at it
through Parliament and
parliamentary rhetoric and
political rhetoric, and I was
encouraged to go and speak to
Brian Harrison, Professor of
British history at Oxford, and
he reckoned he'd done that
already. And he said, why don't
you look at the press? And the
more I looked into it, the more
I realised that the press hadn't
really been explored very much
for that period, for this notion
of gender identities. But also,
more broadly, historians have
been very reluctant to look at
popular newspapers in
particular. And so that started
drawing my attention. Now,
there's a good reason for that,
because it's a real hassle at
that point in time to
investigate newspapers, because
you had to go to the British
Newspaper Library in Colindale
in North London, you had to sit
in a dark room and go through
microfilms and it was really a
pretty slow and tedious process.
But the material was so rich and
so full of interesting and
varied perspectives that I
really got drawn into, into the
field. And so I ended up
researching first gender and
then sexuality. And then, of
course, as soon as I'd finished
most of my work in, in
Colindale, over a period of
several years, then it all
starts getting digitised, which
was slightly frustrating for me,
having spent so long in darkened
rooms. But on the other hand, it
really opened up the field. And
the digitisation of newspapers
and print media has allowed
historians of all different
types, who don't want to
necessarily just focus on
newspapers, but who want to get
some of the perspectives from
newspapers into their work has
allowed the field to blossom.
And so I've, I've found that I
can sort of keep on doing this
sort of work from Sheffield,
where I'm based now.
Nathaniel: Oh fantastic. You,
you have written a bit about in
the past, I believe that kind of
revolution, I suppose, of
digital, online archives for
newspapers. Can you say a little
bit more about how, how that's
affected your own research
methodology? I mean, for
example, I know just from my own
work that qualitative analysis
of newspapers is very, very time
consuming, and to do that kind
of quantitative analysis, you
know, searching for keywords and
so on, without that sort of
technology is either impossible
or just take months and months
and months. So has that changed
over the course of your career
in terms of how you've actually
used these sources?
Adrian: Yeah, in some respects,
and this makes me sound sort of
very old fashioned. I always
tell students that there's no
bad thing to sometimes move
beyond the word search and
actually browse issues and, and
this is a facility that you can
absolutely get with the
digitised archives, and I would
encourage people to do as well
as word searches because when
you have to look at hard copies,
you have to flick through the
newspapers or the magazines,
whether it be turning pages or
zooming through on microfilms or
microfiche. What is good about
that is that you read them in
the way that the people who
originally would have read them
would have, would have done
their their physical products.
And you see the juxtaposition of
different types of news. And I
think that's really, really
important. Because the trouble
with word searching, useful as
that is, is that you can get a
misrepresentation of the
prominence of an issue because
you just keep on finding it
because you're, you're finding
it through the search facility.
And you can, you know, find
something obscure on page 19 of
one issue and blow it up into
something bigger than it is,
because you haven't looked at
pages 1 to 18. Having said that,
the facility to word search has
absolutely transformed things,
because it's still fairly crude,
going in by date and trying to
find if you're trying to find
something very specific, if
you're following particular
people or very specific
institutions or organisations,
there's no substitute for doing
word searches. And so I think
what has happened to my own
methodology is having had that
basis of understanding how the
dynamics of newspapers work,
through browsing through them,
you can build on top of that a
quite sort of sophisticated
searching of particular words.
But you still, I still like
going in and looking at whole
issues even when I've found them
through the word searching.
Nathaniel: So it's still not
wanting to just view, say,
specific articles in isolation
or out of context, but you want
them actually in the context of
adverts, the photographs, the
articles that surround that
particular piece that you're
researching?
Adrian: Absolutely, because I
think ultimately, as a
historian, I'm interested in
what people made of this
material, what they thought
about it, and, and you can't
abstract that from the context
of the page and of the paper as
a whole. And so, people don't
consume news, or they didn't
consume news as abstracted
articles. I mean, in a funny
sort of way, actually, that sort
of word searching produces a
form of media consumption that
is much more like what we have
today, with the sort of
fragmented social media type of
sharing particular small
extracts. Obviously, back then,
you know, that's not how people
consume news. And so I think the
ability to browse through an
issue and see the interplay of
headline, of picture, of advert,
and sometimes of, you know, very
different sorts of views
expressed alongside each other.
I mean, just to give a small
anecdote, one of the things I
started doing in my research was
I looked at the footnotes of
people who had quoted some
particular sorts of gendered
representation. And the emphasis
on, in the histography at that
time, was that after the First
World War, women were encouraged
back to the home, and there was
a relentless pushing of an
ideology of domesticity. So I
went and chased up some of the
footnotes, got some of the
issues out, and that I found on
one sort of fairly memorable
occasion this article, which was
championing domesticity, but
right next to it was a bigger
article talking all about how
modern young women were pushing
through boundaries and breaking
barriers and doing lots of new
things and moving into the
political sphere. And for the
reader, they're looking at both
of them. And you can't just hone
in as a historian on one and not
the other. And so that taught me
quite a lot about you need to
look at whole page, you need to
look at the balance of debate.
You can't just take one or two
articles or representations and
abstract them from their
contexts.
Nathaniel: So it's a combination
of the two, I suppose. On that
note, to give the listener the
fuller picture and a bit of
context to the periods that you
look at, can we talk a little
bit about how print media
developed specifically over the
course of the 19th and into the
20th century? Because I was very
struck by a piece you wrote in
which you, I think you said that
by the 1950s 85% of British
public saw a newspaper every
day. And by 2014 that percentage
had halved. So what, what
happened to get to that point in
the 1950s? And then what, what
caused that drop off afterwards?
Adrian: Yeah, I mean, I think we
can see that sort of century,
from the middle of the the 19th
century to the middle of the
20th century, as really the rise
and rise of the print media and
the emergence of the modern
newspaper industry. And there's
a combination of technological
and social developments behind
that. First off, in terms of
news collection, The Telegraph
from the 1840s completely
transformed the ability to
collect news and to learn about
global events, to learn about
national events. And that allows
an idea of sort of modern news
journalism to develop. And then
you've got, while you've
collected the news, but you need
to be able to print it and
distribute it cheaply,
efficiently, quickly. And so we
have technologies like the rise
of steam printing, the rotating
cylinder press, allowing
newspapers to be printed
efficiently and quickly. We also
have the railways emerging from
the 1830s and 1840s, allowing
these newspapers and magazines
to be distributed all around the
country. So you have these new
technologies which enable the
modern newspapers, the modern
magazine. You have the emergence
of illustration techniques as
well, pioneered by illustration
magazines in the 1840s. So you
have all of that sort of supply
side stuff, but you also have
demand changing. The British
economy is growing significantly
through the process of
industrialisation. We have more
and more people with more
disposable income, who have got
that, those few extra pennies,
who they can spend on a
newspaper once a week, or a
magazine once a week or once a
month. And who are also
attracted by the advertising
that comes in, we have the
emergence of the modern sort of
consumer economy in the second
half of the 19th century. So all
of these factors come together,
and we see a boom in newspaper
production from the 1850s, we
see lots of new magazines coming
onto the market. And there's
this sort of period of growth at
the turn of the 20th century, we
have another breakthrough, which
is the emergence of the popular
Daily Press. So we have The
Daily Mail, which is launched in
1896. And then soon after that,
The Daily Express in 1900, and
the Daily Mirror in 1903, titles
which would dominate the popular
market of the 20th century. And
so we see the growth in the
popular daily market. Again, we
see another sort of trigger
point with the First World War.
Clearly, a huge moment for news
and appetite for news, and we
see a fairly consistent growth
in the interwar period. By the
1930s we see newspapers really
reaching out to the working
class market, so papers like The
Daily Mirror, The Daily Herald,
and so by the middle of the 20th
century, we have ordinary
people, pretty much every day
looking at newspapers. And the
sort of saturation of the
market, it was, you know, pretty
much every day people saw a
newspaper. And then Sundays had
the biggest circulation of all,
we have The News of the World,
astonishingly, over 8 million
copies sold in the middle of the
20th century. About half of the
British adult population reading
a copy of that every week. But
then, of course, we have a
changing media environment, and
the short answer to what happens
to circulation is television
really. I mean, we see that
newspapers and magazines have to
respond to to radio from the
1920s, but television is really
the media form that sucks
attention from newspapers, from,
from cinema. So we do have this,
this challenge that the print
media have to, have to face. And
although they sustain
circulations for quite a long
time, from, you know, the 1990s
we then have the second hit of
the internet, and that really is
what causes a real collapse in
circulation.
Nathaniel: So it seems to be
that that interplay, I suppose,
between the development of new
technology and then associated
social, cultural and political
changes as well, sort of a
feedback loop, I suppose. And
then you kind of have, you know,
widening participation in
politics. What extent does, does
education come into this as
well? So, for example, higher
literacy rate from the 19th
century onwards is, is that a
major factor in in terms of
explaining these ever increasing
readerships?
Adrian: Part of it is
absolutely, and I think a lot of
it's to do with price. There are
plenty of people who could read
but just simply couldn't afford
the cost, even of weekly
newspapers, certainly not daily
newspapers. But education comes
in, in a different sort of way.
I mean, newspapers of the 19th
century, we think of the sort
of, you know, The Times as the
sort of classic example, were
aimed at an elite and really at
a male audience. And it was very
austere on the page full of
columns of small print. And
there was an assumption that the
journalists were writing for
somebody who could take plenty
of time reading the newspaper,
didn't need big, bold headlines
or pictures to absorb their
attention, and had a level of
education that meant that they
could decipher particular, sort
of, elite language, quite formal
language, often quite technical,
political terms, for example, or
economic terms. What happens
with the popular newspapers,
first the Sundays and then the
dailies from the turn of the
20th century, is that the
assumption that people had an
elite education, or that had the
patience to wade through these
columns of tightly printed text,
that was thrown out the window.
We need to be bright and direct
and accessible, we need to write
for people who maybe haven't got
the greatest education, who, who
haven't got the patience to wade
through columns of text and who
want something a bit more hard
hitting, and that they can read
in in half an hour, that they
can look at the political stuff
pretty quickly. But that they
can also have human interest
stories, things that will grab
them about crime or sex or
celebrity, and that they can
pass on and gossip to their
friends, their relatives, their
neighbors, their work
colleagues. Rather than sort of
wade through in a gentleman's
club on an afternoon, you know,
pages and pages of close knit
text about the parliamentary
debate of the day.
Nathaniel: That sort of touches
on one of the things which, for
me, was most striking when I was
going back and reading through
your work, which is the
relationship then between the
rise of print media and
politics. And I suppose we
should qualify what we mean by
politics, right? Because
politics can be, you know, sort
of capital, P politics, high
politics, political parties and
leaderships, or it can be
something much more
comprehensive, I suppose. And I,
I believe that's what you refer
to in your work when you talk
about politics in relation to
print media. So some of our
listeners might be familiar with
the work of people like Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky,
Manufacturing Consent, which
came out in late 1980s. And
that's been obviously very
influential, not just for
historians, but for political
scientists, and so on. And this
idea that the media, or, I
guess, what's sometimes referred
to as legacy media, these big
kind of corporate media
companies determine, or at least
have a very, very significant
influence, in determining the
parameters of political
discourse. People often refer to
the Overton Window being shifted
to the left and to the right.
And that kind of partly being
driven by people who own big
newspapers. You seem to suggest
that the truth is actually
slightly more subtle than that.
I wonder if we could dig into
that a little bit. Because it
seems to be something which is
not just relevant from a
historical sense, but also
something which, which might
interest listeners today. I
think in our sort of current
political moment.
Adrian: I think my starting
point for this sort of debate is
that historians scepticism and
desire to look at things closely
and how they change over time.
And although there's much to be
said for some of those
interpretations of sort of
Manufacturing Consent, there is
a danger that we assume that
certain media forms are always
and inevitably and routinely
pushing a particular set of
class interests, economic
interests or political
interests, and that all aspects
of their content do that all the
time. And that's the thing that
slightly worries me, is that if
we get into a position where
it's sort of inevitably the
case, and that there aren't ever
ways that some of these, say,
popular newspapers challenge
convention, then, I mean, it
seems that we have a quite
reductive view of the political
environment. And what we see
with some of the, say, the
popular dailies that emerge in
the early 20th century, like The
Mail and The Express, is that
they do push conservative views
most of the time. And they also,
you know, they, they, they push
views, sort of imperialist,
colonialist views that you know,
we would look at with some
distaste today. They have quite
strong gendered views often. But
they also are a destabilising
force, because they have to be
popular, and that leads them to
populist directions. They need
to sell their copies, they need
to interest a public, and they
need to energise and attract
their readers into a version of
popular politics, which can lead
in interesting directions. And
that can be quite, can kind of
have a democratic impulse to it.
It can be, well, you know, what
are these elites doing with our
money? For example, why are they
squandering on certain sorts of
things and, and sometimes that
can lead in surprising
directions and can put pressure
on conservative interests. And
so although it does tend to be
right wing, it can be a sort of
populist right wing force, which
can push in the ways of having a
more populist take, I guess, on
party politics. And we should
also not forget, and I think we
tend to assume, because we're
very familiar with The Mail and
we're familiar with The Sun in
recent decades, and we sort of
assume that, well, popular
newspapers are right wing. Well,
for the middle of the 20th
century, that's not the case.
The Daily Mirror is a
fascinating left of center
newspaper. It starts off as a
stablemate of The Daily Mail,
starts off as a conservative
paper, but it reinvents itself
as a working class tabloid in
the mid 1930s. And it develops
an interesting and very
influential left of center,
populist political voice. It is
very much in favor of the
Beveridge Report, which sets up
the welfare state in the 1940s.
It is very much supporting the
Labor Party as it comes to power
in 1945, and reconstructs
Britain, and it is a sort of
often a cheeky and sort of
irreverent force, which often
cots the snoot at aristocratic
interests, or snobbery, or
elitism in British society. Of
which there was plenty, let's
face it, in the 50s and 60s, and
so both on the right wing side,
but also on this less familiar
left wing territory, we can find
popular newspapers doing
interesting things. Now, that's
not to say that they're calling
for revolution or kind of
destabilised capitalism. There
are absolutely limits to that
and a broader sort of critique
of the press that they are sort
of consumerist because they're
relying on advertising, that is
fairly powerful, but we
shouldn't render these
newspapers and magazines
entirely predictable in their
effect on British politics.
Nathaniel: So it's too
simplistic, I suppose, to say
either that the press is simply
a kind of mirror, just
reflecting the views of the
populace. But at the same time,
it's not dictating things,
either. There's a relationship
there. I mean, I was also struck
by some of the examples that you
gave, I think, in The Daily
Mirror, with the introduction of
columns aimed specifically of
female readers in the sort of
first few decades of the 20th
century. And it seemed to me
that sometimes you can have
situations where quite a right
wing newspaper does quite
progressive things, not
necessarily for the reasons that
people on the left would do
them, I suppose. But you know,
the, the outcome is still the
same, right? Which is a kind of
increased audience for female
writers, for example. Is that
fair to say do you think?
Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. And
so, going back to what I was
saying about being interested in
sort of the gender dynamics
after the First World War, what
I quickly came to realise was
that even in papers that had a
fairly clear political line, if
we're talking about sort of
capital P politics, in terms of,
might be supporting the
Conservative Party in, in the
sort of 1920s. There are lots of
other issues where the sort of
proprietor, the editor didn't
really have strong views. And
one of those was, indeed, gender
and the role of women after the
First World War. And at that
level, then you can find all
sorts of unpredictable material,
you can. There's lots and lots
of stories celebrating female
firsts, you know, the first
female barrister, the first
female MP, first aviator to sort
of cross the Atlantic, all of
those sorts of things, which,
you know, leads to having some
quite empowering images of
female achievement and female
success. But also newspapers,
they're miscellanies. They
contain lots and lots of
different voices. And again, my
impatience is with this sort of
reduction of what is a very
complicated and multifaceted
print publication to sort of one
voice which is conservative, or
capitalist, or consumerist.
Well, there's all sorts of
different messages, there's all
sorts of nuances, there's all
sorts of topics which, you know,
like gender or sexuality, which
ooze out of those categories and
go in unpredictable situations,
and unpredictable directions.
And I think one of the exciting
things about having resources
like this is that you can go in
and have a look. And I bet you,
you pick any publication from
any day that you go in, or any
edition you go in, you will find
something that surprises you.
You will find something in there
that you weren't quite
expecting, or that was a bit
different to to what you've been
led to believe, or which doesn't
necessarily fit in to some of
the assumptions or stereotypes
you might have had about that
publication. Because print media
is multifaceted, and it has a
miscellany that it's trying to
sell to a broad constituency of
readers.
Nathaniel: Absolutely. I mean, I
think as well, that this is
something which Labour
historians will be very familiar
with, right, which is, you know,
it's perfectly possible to find
a Trade Unioist paper which is,
on the one hand very racist, and
on the other hand very, very
sexist, right, or homophobic, or
whatever it might be. Like,
it's, it's perfectly possible to
be socially conservative and
self identify as a socialist or
a Marxist even, right? So, yeah,
I'm fascinated by that nuance
there. We should definitely come
back to the topic of gender,
right? Because this is sort of
key to a lot of your work. Could
we say a little bit more then
about, don't know whether it
would be correct to describe it
as the construction of gender
and sexuality in the British
press. How would you categorise
that?
Adrian: Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, I think what's
interesting about the print
media is this deeply entrenched
view that men and women want to
read different things. And to
some extent, we still have that
as a fairly powerful legacy
today. We see the first women's
magazines emerging in the late
17th century, and there is this
very stable set of interests
which women are supposed to
have. So it will be fashion and
beauty. It will be domesticity
and domestic crafts. It will be
housewifery, motherhood,
childcare, and those are sort of
sold and packaged in various
different sorts of of ways. But
as we've been talking about,
it's much more fluid and
unstable than that, particularly
as we move into periods of sort
of gender contestation, where we
have the rise of the women's
movement in the late 19th
century, and suffrage
campaigning that lots of people
will, will know about, and the
campaigns for the vote. And then
where we see there, we see lots
of different voices. We see both
women's magazines starting to
wonder whether they should cover
some of this stuff. But more
significantly, we have, we have
women's columns emerging in
papers. We have the rise of sort
of female columnists who
sometimes take surprising
positions about things. And we
see reporting of women as they
move into political sphere or
public spheres. So we have a
whole range of different types
of representation and different
types of imagery. And one of the
things that I think is important
to do, and this goes back to not
just honing in on particular
word searches, but browsing
through an issue, is that,
again, you will see a whole
range of different gendered
imagery. If you pick up any
publication, you will see
adverts which portray women in
particular ways. You will see
photographs or illustrations of
women or women's fashions. You
will have material written about
women in their traditional
roles, but you might have
material about women in the
public sphere. And you have to
try, I think, as a historian,
try and map some of that, and
try and imagine what it must
have been like for the readers
to consume that. And I think
what is interesting, and what I
think a good historian needs to
do is not to say, well, there's
this voice in this period and
then it moves to that voice in a
later period, is really to chart
the changing balance of these
different voices. There are
always different voices. There
are always tensions and
instabilities. But it's, do we
see more of this sort of stuff.
Do we see more about women in
the public sphere? How is it
treated? What sorts of ways are
they presented? And how does
that change over time? You know,
sort of, to try and map these
different voices. And that's
what I've tried to do in, in
some of my work. And you can do
that with lots of different
identities. It doesn't have to
be gender, it can be sexual
identities, it can be racial
identities. You will never find
a very clear cut, everything
that everybody says is a is like
this. It's always this
contestation, this instability,
this fluidity and, and that is
why I think, again, print media
is such an interesting source
for the historian or any
scholar, really. Because you can
see these different dynamics and
these different voices
interplaying, and newspapers are
an arena in which we see these
different voices playing out.
Nathaniel: I think that that
aspect, especially is really
important, because I think that
sometimes there is a bit of a
misconception about gender
history, right, which is it is
just about femininity, and
actually it's about all gender
identities. I mean, for example,
in your work, have you
encountered an evolution at all
in the depiction of the
portrayal of masculinity as
well, and how men are presented,
or kind of male archetypes?
Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. I
mean, I think that was something
that was really interested me in
the aftermath of the First World
War in particular. You obviously
have a form of heroic military
masculinity that was very
important in the sort of late
19th century, in Imperial
narratives and Imperial stories.
And that is in many respects,
damaged by the bloodshed and
carnage of the First World War.
And there's lots of discussion
of shell shock, and of the sort
of mental health effects of men
having to be put into those
sorts of situations and the
assumption that they should be
able to handle them. And so I
think we do see interesting
shifts in the 1920s and 1930s.
In the wake of that, and then
the rise of psychological and
psychoanalytic language, we
start to see uncovering of
different aspects to
masculinity. We also see with
the rise of unemployment, a sort
of challenge to that male
breadwinner in the 1930s in
particular, and many men are
uncomfortable with having to
see, say, their wives or
partners or daughters go out to
work while they were stuck at
home. And that led to some
interesting debates about, well
you know, what is masculinity,
what the crucial elements of
masculinity in the press. And
again, you can take that
forward, and it's very
interesting to see how those
debates develop in the 1960s and
70s. There's some very
interesting debates about
masculinity, and, you know, self
presentation of men, and long
hair, and all the rest of it.
And again, it's something that
you can pretty much look, pick
up any newspaper or magazine and
just think, you know, what sorts
of images are coming across? And
how do they define masculinity.
There'll be a set of images
about probably men in public
life, looking a particular sort
of way and acting in certain
sorts of manners. But there will
be lots of other images too. And
it's interesting to tease out,
again, the changing balance of
those over time.
Nathaniel: I think that's a very
clear example of precisely why
newspapers are so valuable, not
just for social historians but
for cultural historians as well,
right, to sort of chart this,
these changing attitudes as well
over the course the 19th and
20th Century. On that it is
important to note, obviously,
that at BOA at the moment, we're
in the process of publishing
nine periodicals which were
various point owned by The
Illustrated London News. And
Adrian, you very kindly agreed
to sit on the editorial board
for this new series, which is
titled The British Illustrate
Periodicals 1869–1970, and you
have also written a contextual
essay titled British Print Media
1860s–1960s which is available
on our website now. Would you be
able to talk a little bit about,
first of all, the significance
of the Illustrated London News,
and then these, these nine
sister titles, because you
referred at the start of the
interview to technology and the
introduction of steam printing
and also illustrations. So if
we, if we go right back to
there, that'd be helpful for our
listeners?
Adrian: Yeah I mean, the
Illustrated London News, which
was introduced in 1842, really
demonstrates the potential for
illustration in print media.
This was a sort of a new
technology. And we're talking
about wooden engraved
illustrations at this point.
Photography was starting to, you
know, the early experimental
photography was starting to
emerge, but it would only be at
the end of the 19th century and
then into the early 20th century
that we see photography actually
integrated in into, into print
media. So what we're talking
about here is these
illustrations, which are done by
artists and often very stylised.
But they were of real interest
to readers who otherwise were
sort of operating in a largely
sort textual culture, and the
text often in tight columns, as
I've said, you know, was all
that they got. And so to
suddenly, to have these sort of
bold and accessible
illustrations, opens up the
print market to a different sort
of publication. And the
Illustrated London News is right
at the forefront of that. And
some of the other titles in the
collection are then responding
to that sort of boom in the
illustrated periodical. So
titles like The Graphic, The
Sketch and The Sphere, all of
those are further iterations of
this sort of attempt to cater
with pictures and illustration
as well as words, to this
audience who are desperate for,
for sort of entertainment and
information. We live in a, in an
era where the visual is
everywhere. We're so accustomed
online and TV to seeing things,
you have to imagine an
environment where illustration
is very unusual, and to find
images of sort of things that
are happening around you,
contemporary things, it's very,
very difficult. And so this was
a really interesting innovation
in the news market. And then
there are some of the sister
titles in the collection, which
do some really interesting
things that touch on the sort of
themes that we've talked about.
So Tatler is a really
influential sort of society
stage fashion periodical, which
is, it was great for looking at
ideas of femininity and
masculinity. And looking at some
of the cultural changes of the
early 20th century. There's a
particularly great iteration of
this with London Life in the
1960s, which is such a good way
of getting into the sort of
swing London of the mid 1960s.
It doesn't last very long and is
absorbed into the Tatler. But
for that brief period is hugely
influential in defining that
idea of swinging London. And
then to go back to the gender
politics that we were
discussing, Britannia and Eve,
in the collection are really
good examples of publications
which in the sort of late 1920s,
they're trying to appeal to
this, this modern woman who they
are sure probably does have some
of those traditional interests
that they assume that women have
always had, like fashion and the
domestic world. But also they're
conscious that women's lives
have changed, that they are now
voting. They can now participate
in the public sphere, they can
now move into different
professions, and so we can see
some interesting reflections on
that new world, that new gender
order that we see in the
interwar period. So a whole host
of really great titles that
allow you to explore different
facets of British political,
social and cultural history.
Nathaniel: Fantastic. Well,
thank you again for your work on
those collections for us,
Adrian, and also thanks for
agreeing to meet with us today.
I hope the listeners enjoyed our
conversation. I'm sure they'll
find it absolutely fascinating,
and hopefully we'll talk soon.
Adrian: A pleasure. Thanks very
much.
Nathaniel: Thank you.
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