Photograph from Winged Squadrons by Cecil Beaton (1942).
“Here is something entirely new and dynamic, and yet still almost as mysterious and inexplicable as death itself. Never before have battles been fought six miles above the surface of the earth at a speed of over three hundred miles an hour… A new mould of men has been cast. The feats of their bravery haunt of, they baffle us, and satisfy completely the spirit of romantic daring inherent in our island race. Perhaps this British aptitude for flying is part of the sailing tradition and the feeling for freedom and adventure that is a heritage from Drake. Maybe there is a natural sequence from sea to air, and the Englishman who enjoyed drifting along with the breezes in his boat at four knots an hour is the father of the boy who now wishes to beat the winds in his Hurricane” – Cecil Beaton, preface to Winged Squadrons (1942).
Before the Second World War, Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) had been a glamorous society photographer, responsible for some of the most striking portraits of the 1920s and 30s. At the outbreak of hostilities he turned his considerable talent to the service of the Allied cause and became one of the most influential photographers of the war, with his lens largely shaping public perception of the conflict. His portraits of Winston Churchill and the Queen boosted morale at home, and a photo of a child injured during the Blitz “was said to have influenced American feeling concerning the war more than any other picture” (ODNB) when it appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1940. Even more importantly, he traveled around the world photographing and interviewing fighting men and women, and “By his courage and dedicated approach he earned the respect of the three services” (ODNB).
Cecil Beaton self-portrait.
One of the six books that resulted from Beaton’s war photography was Winged Squadrons, for which he visited two dozen air bases, recording the lives of RAF men in photos and moving prose. We recently acquired a unique item – Beaton’s working maquette (SOLD) for this book:
Maquette for Winged Squadrons by Cecil Beaton.
A maquette is a bit like a draft, or model, of a book used during the editing and design process, and can tell us a great deal about the circumstances of a book’s production. This one includes the entire text in draft form, with numerous annotations in ink by Beaton himself:
Beaton’s handwritten corrections to the typescript of Winged Squadrons.
Corrections made during editing reveal Beaton’s thought processes, and how his ideas about the content and structure of the book changed as he worked. Passages that have been deleted in blue and red pencil by the official censor demonstrate just how closely the author worked with the airmen, with details such as the following in brackets being cut, “So that they shall not be located by their radio, the bombers seldom break wireless silence on the outward journey, ”. In another example below, sensitive information about foreign targets is excised:
Twelve photographs are included with the maquette, and all are stamped and numbered in ink on the verso by Beaton’s studio, along with pencil and ink notes related to their use in the book. All the photographs were also stamped as “approved” by the Press & Censorship Bureau during September 1941 and January 1942. Each appears in the final book, and it is possible to compare the full-sized photos of the maquette with the cropped images in the final version–in one case a photo has been altered to hide pin-ups on the wall of an airman’s bunk. Below, the original photo before cropping:
A portion of another photograph has been whited out, possibly for security reasons, a correction just visible in the printed version:
Below, more of the original photographs included with the maquette:
Airmen with messenger pigeons used for delivering sensitive information.
The maquette is held loosely between two boards, the cover with a handwritten title. This can be seen in the image below, together with a first edition of the final book and the folding case that they are housed in:
For more on Cecil Beaton:
The Imperial War Museum is hosting a major new exhibition, Cecil Beaton – Theatre of War, which will include 250 of Beaton’s wartime photographs as well as films, drawings, and diaries. There is a preview at Londonist and The Guardian has a slideshow of images from the exhibition.
Wanted for Incitement to Murder: Nazi propaganda leaflet of Churchill with a Thompson sub-machine gun.
One of the most famous propaganda images of the Second World War, this photo of Winston Churchill with a Thompson sub-machine gun, or Tommy gun, was taken while the Prime Minister was inspecting a coastal defence unit at Hartlepool in July 1940. But Churchill’s resemblance to a stereotypical American mobster wasn’t lost on the Nazis, who began dropping these propaganda leaflets over Britain within weeks of the photo being taken. These leaflets are very delicate, making original copies extremely uncommon.
The Times is today featuring an article on P. G. Wodehouse’s radio broadcasts from Berlin during the Second World War, based on information in newly released MI5 files. We currently have in stock an important letter by Wodehouse, one that shines light on the difficulty he faced in trying to restore his reputation following the war.
P. G. Wodehouse (1904).
At the beginning of the war Wodehouse was an international celebrity best known for his comedic “Jeeves” novels. He and his wife were living in France and, unable to escape the German advance, he was interned along with all other Englishmen in the country. He was soon released, partly due to his age, but also because of his popularity in America, which was still a neutral country that Germany hoped to avoid provoking. It was for this reason that the Germans requested he make a series of humorous broadcasts about his internment for the American public. He complied and, though the material contained nothing anti-British or sympathetic to the Nazis, Wodehouse was roundly reviled and placed under serious investigation headed by a Major E. J. P. Cussen.
Wodehouse was still haunted by this years later. In the spring of 1953 he was in New York finishing a volume of memoirs and proposed to include transcripts of his Berlin talks in order to demonstrate their innocence. Our letter reveals that his investigator Major Cussen read the book at draft stage and confronted the publisher with the fact that Wodehouse had not supplied accurate transcripts of the original broadcasts. Wodehouse floundered to explain this to his editor, writing that, “I added funny material whenever I saw the opportunity… You see what I mean? The stuff is the same, but I added comic material… I suppose it is safest to be absolutely accurate, though it does seem a pity to cut out funny stuff.”
Though he was trying to restore his reputation by publishing the full texts of the broadcasts, Wodehouse was unable to resist adding additional comedic touches that jeopardized the integrity of the project. Ironically, it was this desire to amuse and entertain that not only created his celebrity and influenced his decision to make the broadcasts in the first place, but finally damaged his attempts to rehabilitate his reputation.
Letter from P. G. Wodehouse to his editor discussing his broadcasts from Germany during the Second World War.
Among the joys of cataloguing rare books and historical materials are the serendipitous moments of discovery and connection. We recently obtained a mysterious set of 27 photographs related to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima, and within a few months of cataloging them I discovered that New York’s International Center of Photography is running a fascinating exhibit that may explain some of the images in our collection.
Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 showcases photographs taken by The US Strategic Bombing Survey which, in the months following the war, saw more than a thousand military and civilian experts dispatched to Japan to record and analyze the effects of atomic weapons on urban infrastructure. Their work formed the basis for Cold-War civilian defence planning. The ICP now houses a collection of 700 haunting images taken during this initiative, and the prints have their own incredible history, having nearly been destroyed several times. You can see some of the images on the ICP website linked to above, as well as at The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine.
Some of our photos may be the work of the USSBS, and we would love to hear from anyone with knowledge of them. They fall into three distinct groups:
4 of the images are not by the USSBS, but are captioned military photographs that have been widely disseminated, including publication in the September 17, 1945 edition of Life Magazine. Some of these images bear green ink stamps that say “TV” and hand-written notes on the backs stating “Please return to visitor office”. We haven’t been able to determine what this means. Was it a military visitor office, perhaps located near Hiroshima, or something else entirely? TV wasn’t widely available in the US until the late 40s and early 50s, so were the stamps added later?
Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Mushroom Cloud
Arial View of Hiroshima Post-Blast
13 of the photos appear to be amateur before and after shots (all around the same size), and none bear the ink stamps or “return to visitor office” notations. Numerous questions arise–who took them and why? Are they all the work of the same photographer returning to the scene after the blast, or are they by several different people? Are any of them related to the USSBS? If they aren’t official photos then how did they come to be in the collection?
Hiroshima Commercial Museum (Atomic Bomb Dome)
Hiroshima Commercial Museum (Atomic Bomb Dome) Pre-Blast
Hiroshima Commerical Museum (Atomic Bomb Dome) Post-Blast
Nagarekawa Church of the Japan Christian Society
Hiroshima Railway Station Pre-Blast
Just as mysterious is the third set of photos, each of which has had “Terrible Sight by Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima” handwritten on the negative in white block capitals. These shots are more professionally framed and the prints are higher quality. In style and subject matter they closely resemble the images in the USSBS collection. One of the photos also bears the TV ink stamp and visitor office note. I am not aware, however, that any USSBS photos were captioned in this way, and I discovered online auction records from New Zealand in which photos with the same style of captioning were recently sold in lots of military paraphernalia. Are they USSBS photos, general military images, or shots taken by soldiers to send home as souvenirs?
If you know anything about these photos, or are interested in purchasing the collection, please leave a comment or contact me directly via email: laura AT peterharrington.co.uk.
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