War, Journalism and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century

Called "e;the King of Correspondents"e; Henry W. Nevinson (1856 - 1941) captured the political zeitgeist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in his journalism and his commentaries on key world events. The British journalist and war correspondent covered conflicts across Europe and Africa and wrote about the United States during a time of upheaval on the brink of the modern age. He observed the Siege of Ladysmith, the 1905 revolution in Russia, wars in Greece and South Africa and the tragedy at Gallipoli, shaping the understanding of world affairs at the time. Nevinson campaigned for social justice in Central Africa and India and was the first to report sympathetically on Germany's devastation after the First World War. In the 1920s he visited Palestine and Iraq and 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 respected journalist whose vivid reportage of events and witty portraits of political and artistic figures of the time made him an acute observer who wrote exquisite prose. Based on Nevinson's compelling diaries covering nearly 50 years, Angela John's powerful prose captures, for the first time, the story of this important and groundbreaking figure. Nevinson's life sheds new light on the construction of the world order in the last century, at the same time helping us to understand more clearly the changing role of the war correspondent in a media-dominant age. His observations on the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the United States illuminate many of the conflicts which resonate in today's uncertain world.