T.P.'s Journal of Great Deeds of the Great War

[Uncle George]

edited by T.P. O'Connor

T.P. O'Connor was an MP from 1880 to 1929. He was also a journalist, and during the Great War edited and produced a weekly publication, "T.P.'s Journal of Great Deeds of the Great War". These weekly works were assembled and bound into volumes, and the volume I have been reading (volume 2 of, I think, 4) covers January to AprIl 1915.

Its 364 pages is a collection of a number of things: gossip, pen portraits of generals and politicians, brief regimental histories, poems, cartoons; an account of the role of the sniper, a look at hospital ships, at submarines, at battle-cruisers; the work of despatch riders. Accounts of, for instance, HMS B11 and her commander Lieutenant Norman Holbrook VC; how Corporal Matthew Pugh won the DCM; the brief life and death of Second Lieutenant D. W. Rennie of the Royal Fusiliers, and his letters to his mother. It contains a great number of photographs, both formal, and informal snaps.

This is a work of journalism, not of history; and some of it reads like propoganda. But it is hugely enjoyable. I confess I had not heard of it until I stumbled upon it, while looking for something else. I heartily recommend it.