April 8, 2013 saw the death of Margaret Thatcher aged 87, who was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990. She was Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. The Russians labelled  her the ‘Iron Lady’, a title which she was glad to accept. Her legacy remains controversial. Many admire her; many loathe her; few are indifferent.

An important event during Mrs. Thatcher’s premiership was the Falklands (Malvinas) War of 1982. Because it was an important historical event in its own right (at least for Britain), the handling of the Falklands news became particularly significant in the history of Reuters. Put to the test of reporting a big running story in which the United Kingdom was a principal player, Reuters was finally able to confirm that it was truly a supranational organisation, despite being headquartered in London.

One hundred years earlier, things were very different. While ensuring accuracy, Reuters would have unquestionably reported any war from a British Empire viewpoint. By 1982, in complete contrast, Editor-in-Chief Michael Reupke took it for granted that no correspondent would write in pro-British terms. This view would not have endeared him to Mrs. Thatcher. (more…)

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal….and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”

-President Abraham Lincoln – Consecration Ceremony of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery,  Gettysburg, Pennsyslvania – November 1863

Early in Steven Spielberg’s new film ‘Lincoln’ –  for dramatic impact – some Unionist soldiers encounter Lincoln and recite back to him his famous words. Julius Reuter should have been the first to relay the text of Lincoln’s famous speech to London. Infuriatingly, that distinction went to a rival agency, the Electric and International Telegraph Company.

What went wrong? (more…)

Paul Julius Reuter was quite a good businessman. True, his earlier career had thrown up more  failures than successes. But he had shown sufficient shrewdness to learn from his mistakes. After 1851 when he established his fledgling business in London there was still the occasional failure. Gradually however these failures became fewer.

What other factors contributed to his ultimate success?

In earlier blog entries, I highlighted Reuter’s tremendous luck in finding exactly the right wife at the right time. Clementine Magnus was intelligent, well-educated, ambitious and energetic. Unusually for the 1840s and 50s, she was prepared to work “hands-on” with her husband, getting their new venture off the ground. She knew as much about the telegraphic news business as he did. The marriage was a long and happy one. Were it not for this drive, unswerving support and total belief in him, Julius Reuter might well have ended up as no more than a footnote in history.

The Founder of Reuters not only found the right wife, he found the right staff for his Victorian agency. Indeed, he was a very good judge of people. In this, he tended towards the long view – as in the notable case of Sigmund Englander, his very first editor. (more…)

Even today, the impact of the First World War remains fresh in our collective memory. ‘Heartwarming’ stories from those fighting on the Western Front in France and Belgium were always going to be thin on the ground. But one story which has now acquired the status of legend is the account of those unofficial, spontaneous ceasefires which took place during the week leading up to that first wartime Christmas of 1914. In what has become known as ‘The Christmas Truce’, troops from both the Allied and German sides crossed over  “no man’s land” to shake hands, exchange gifts, sing carols and, in some places, play games of football.

This was not the way to win wars. For several days, news of these events was hushed up by an unofficial press embargo. Then on New Year’s Eve, The New York Times carried the story. As a newspaper in a neutral country, it was unaffected by any embargo and was perhaps more prepared to take one step back and view events with objectivity. Once the story was out – and rather surprisingly – the British newspapers followed with astonishing speed, publishing first-hand accounts from soldiers in the field, taken from letters home to their families. Most of the news media ran with the story.

But not Reuters. (more…)

Skyfall, this year’s addition to the James Bond movie franchise, marks half a century since the release of ‘Dr No’, the first feature film to feature British Secret Agent 007.

Ian Fleming was the man behind Bond.  Born in 1908, he died in 1964 at the age of 56.

From 1945 to 1959, he worked as Foreign Manager for Kemsley (later Thomson) newspapers. But early in the 30s, when still a young man, he was a Reuters journalist.

Fleming never forgot his time with Reuters. He frequently recalled those years in interviews, describing the British newsagency as “a very good mill”.  “The training there gives you a good, straightforward style” he said.

In February 1988, retired Reuters journalist, Basil Chapman, wrote an excellent account of Fleming’s time with the company for its then house-magazine ‘Reuters World’.

Here it is: (more…)

1939 was Hollywood’s Golden Year. Its classic films included  “Gone with the Wind”, “The Wizard of Oz”, “Jessie James”, “Wuthering Heights”, “Of Mice and Men”, “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” as well as two iconic films directed by John Ford – the definitive “Stagecoach” and the highly-successful “Drums along the Mohawk”.

Set during the American Revolution/War of Independence, and starring Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda, ‘Drums across the Mohawk’ followed the lives of settlers in the strategically important Mohawk Valley on the frontier of New York state. The couple suffered attacks on their farm from the British, from Native Americans and from “Tories” (those allied to the British cause). Finally they were forced  to take refuge in Fort Herkimer. Reinforcements arrived in the nick of time from Fort Dayton. The war ended and the patriots raised the American flag above the Fort.

Archie Thomson – great-great-great-great grandfather of David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters, took an active part in these historic events. He was not, however, one of the loyal Americans defending Fort Herkimer. He was on the other side. (more…)

‘The dead are knocking on the doors of Unter den Linden………’

During the last days of the war in Europe – in April 1945 – the story goes that Adolf Hitler had a Reuters teleprinter in his bunker below the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.  He also had a radio-set which could receive the BBC.  Hitler was said to have learnt while in the bunker that the Russians had entered the city and that Gestopo Chief, Heinrich Himmler,  had offered to surrender to the Western Allies.  How plausible is this picture?

It was probably true. (more…)

And when no hope was left in sight

on that starry starry night

you took your life as lovers often do.

-Don McLean 1971

Paris – Christmas Eve 1932. At a hotel in the elegant rue de Rivoli, an attractive dark-haired woman in her thirties checked into a room. Dressed in worn, but once- expensive clothes, and speaking with a marked Russian accent, she signed the register as ‘Mary Hall’.

Three days later, hotel staff heard a single gun-shot ring out from her room. On a bed strewn with white roses, ‘Mary Hall’ was found dying with a self-inflicted bullet wound in the head.

The identity of the woman tantalized the newspaper-reading public. Who was she? What could have driven her to such a tragic end? Rapidly, her name began to be mis-spelt in many of the papers.  Rather than ‘Mary’ she was now the more-romantic Marie Hall.

Ten days passed. A ‘mysterious Russian’ appeared at the morgue. Refusing to give his name, he identified the woman as Nina Williams, the divorced wife of a New York stockbroker, Douglas Williams, until recently Reuters General Manager in New York. (more…)

…The bare rolling stretch of country from the North Tyne and Cheviots to the Scottish southern uplands was for a long time the territory of men who spoke English but had the outlook of Afghan tribesmen; they prized a poem almost as much as plunder, and produced such an impressive assembly of local narrative songs that some people used to label all our greater folk poems as ‘Border Ballads’ …

Folk Song in England: A L Lloyd (2008)

It was high summer in the year 1773. At the door of one of the cottages in the tiny Scottish border hamlet of Nether Knock in Eskdale, a 24 year-old country carpenter bade a final farewell to his parents, his brothers and his only sister. Lifting his bundle onto his shoulder, he followed the rough road beside the river out of the valley. On reaching the small town of Langholm, he turned westward and continued on foot for a further 25 miles to Dumfries. There, waiting at the quayside, was a ship bound for Canada. Until that moment, he had never seen the sea.

The name of the young carpenter was Archie Thomson –  great-great-great-great grandfather of David Thomson, Chairman of Thomson Reuters.

I think that we will not follow his ship, unfurling its sails as it moves out into the River Nith towards the Solway Firth and on to the New World. Instead, let us return to the old world of Eskdale. For it is there that  we may discover more about the Thomson family and the life which Archie had chosen to leave behind.

There had been Thomsons in Eskdale as long as anyone could remember. For centuries they had been associated most particularly with the hamlets of Nether Knock and Mid Knock. (more…)

This time, I revisit the story of Ernest Richard Sheepshanks, Reuters ‘Golden Boy’ during the increasingly turbulent 1930s. Again, this story comes with a ‘shock warning’  so if you are likely to be easily shocked  you have been warned!

For Dick Sheepshanks, 27 year old Reuters correspondent covering the General Franco’s Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War, the end came suddenly and without warning.  It was December 1937, the very last day of the old year.

Retired Reuters journalist, Peter Mosley, gave the facts in our Thomson Reuters ‘In Memoriam’ book.

‘…..Sheepshanks joined a convoy of press cars to visit the front line near the ancient city of Teruel, in the foothills of the Sierra de Sudar range in eastern Spain. The cars pulled into the main square of Cudete, a village about five kilometres (three miles) from Teruel. It was bitterly cold. The journalists went to look for a vantage point from where they could observe the battle for Teruel but could not find one. Four of them climbed into one of the cars. chatted, ate chocolate and smoked cigarettes to help keep themselves warm. Suddenly, the Republicans began shelling the village. The first shell landed a few  hundred yards from the parked convoy. The second one exploded just beside Sheepshanks’s car, riddling it with shrapnel. In the driver’s seat and closest to the blast, American reporter Bradish Johnson, of the Spur, died instantly. Sheepshanks, sitting next to him, was hit in the head. He never regained consciousness and died that evening. In the rear of the car, another American, Edward Neil of the Associated Press, received leg wounds from which he later died. The fourth war correspondent in the car escaped with minor scalp wounds. He was Harold (‘Kim’) Philby of the Times of London …..’

To Sir Roderick Jones, the Head of Reuters News Agency, correspondent Dick Sheepshanks had represented everything he would have liked to have been – but wasn’t. Tall, debonair and handsome, born in 1910 to a ‘good’ Yorkshire ‘county’ family, Dick boasted an impressive academic and sports record. He also enjoyed useful personal connections.

At Eton, where he was Captain of Cricket, he shared the same school house as Sir Christopher Chancellor, Reuters Manager in the Far East. From Eton he followed Chancellor’s footsteps to Trinity College, Cambridge to read History. He played cricket for Yorkshire, football for the Corinthians (amateur) club and captained his College cricket team. He was popular with his Reuters colleagues, some of whom assumed him to be the unofficial fiancée of socialite Jeanne Stourton, daughter of Viscount Southwell. His cousin was Anthony Blunt, another Trinity man, who, forty odd years later, would be revealed as a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies working for the Soviet Union from the 30s to the early 1950s.

Jones, small in stature, with shoes specially built-up to increase his height, was a hat-salesman’s son from Dukinfield near Manchester. His parents had married five weeks before his birth, and his education went no further than the local Board School. He had begun a long way from Eton and Oxford, and this could have made him jealous of Sheepshanks. Instead, in some ways, he began almost to regard Dick as a son. He already had three sons, but perhaps Dick Sheepshanks was the one he would most ’liked’ to have had. (more…)