History
In January 1941 the Post published their "Plan for Britain". This included minimum wages throughout industry, full employment, child allowances, a national health service, the planned use of land and a complete overhaul of education. This document led to discussions about post-war Britain and was a populist forerunner of William Beveridge's November 1942 Report.
Sales of Picture Post increased further during World War II and by December 1943 the magazine was selling 1,950,000 copies a week. By the end of 1949 circulation had declined to 1,422,000.
Founding editor Stefan Lorant (who had also founded Lilliput and had even earlier pioneered the picture-story in Germany in the 1920s) had been succeeded by (Sir) Tom Hopkinson in 1940. Lorant, who had some Jewish ancestry, had been imprisoned by Hitler in the early 1930s, and wrote a best-selling book thereafter, I Was Hitler's Prisoner. By 1940, he feared he would be captured in a Nazi invasion of Britain, and fled to Massachusetts, USA, where he wrote important illustrated U. S. histories and biographies.
New editor Hopkinson said his photographers were thoroughbreds, and whereas text could always be written after the event, if his photographers did not come back with good pictures, he had nothing to work with. Years later Hopkinson said the greatest photos he ever received to lay out were Bert Hardy's images from the Korean War Battle of Incheon, which James Cameron wrote the article for. The magazine's greatest photographers included Hardy, Kurt Hutton, Felix Man, Francis Reiss, Thurston Hopkins, John Chillingworth, Grace Robertson, and Leonard McCombe (McCombe eventually joined Life Magazine's staff). Staff writers included MacDonald Hastings, Lorna Hay, Sydney Jacobson, J.B. Priestley, Lionel Birch, James Cameron, Fyfe Robertson, Anne Scott-James, Robert Kee, and Bert Lloyd; many notable freelancer writers contributed, as well, including George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Parker, and William Saroyan.
Editor Tom Hopkinson was often in conflict with (Sir) Edward G. Hulton, the owner of Picture Post. Hulton mainly supported the Conservative Party and objected to Hopkinson's socialist views. This conflict led to Hopkinson's dismissal in 1950 following the publication of Cameron's article, with pictures by Hardy, about South Korea's treatment of political prisoners in the Korean War.
By June 1952, circulation had fallen to 935,000. Sales continued to decline in the face of competition from television and a revolving door of new editors. By the time the magazine was closed in July 1957, circulation was less than 600,000 copies a week.
Picture Post was digitised as The Picture Post Historical Archive, 1938-1957 and consists of the complete, fully searchable facsimile archive of the Picture Post. It was made available in 2011 to libraries and institutions.
Read more about this topic: Picture Post
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)