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1914
Franz Ferdinand assassinated
Europe declares war
Recruitment begins
Battle of Mons
Battle of the Marne
Battle of the Aisne
East Coast bombed
1915
Edith Cavell executed
Poison gas introduced
Gallipoli Campaign begins
RMS Lusitania sunk
Munitions Ministry created
1916
Verdun Offensive begins
Battle of Jutland
Somme Offensive begins
1917
USA enters the war
W.A.A.C. established
Battle of Passchendaele
1918
Rationing introduced
Russian Armistice signed
Operation Michael begins
Hundred Days Offensive
Spanish Flu peaks
Armistice signed
1919
Peace Treaty signed at Versailles
Cenotaph unveiled
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War ArtistsAAlfred LeeteAmedee ForestierAnnie FishArthur WattsBBert ThomasBruce BairnsfatherEEdmund BlampiedEdward Tennyson ReedFFortunino MataniaFrank ReynoldsFrederic VilliersGG. H. DavisGeorge BelcherGeorge StuddyHH. M. BatemanHarold C. EarnshawHarry L. OakleyHelen McKiePPercival AndersonPhilip DaddRRaphael KirchnerReginald HigginsRichard Caton WoodvilleSSamuel BeggSteven SpurrierWWill OwenWilliam Heath Robinson
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The Sketch
The Sketch
Launched in 1893 as a sister paper to The Illustrated London News, The Sketch billed itself as a “A Journal of Art and Actuality” with a light-hearted mix of theatre, celebrity and gossip that was designed to counterbalance the more heavyweight, news-focused content of the ILN.
The brainchild of journalist Clement Shorter and William Ingram (son of the ILN’s founder, Hebert Ingram), Shorter would edit the magazine until 1900. He was succeeded by John Latey from 1900-1902 and Keble Howard (1902-1905). Bruce Ingram, also editor of The Illustrated London News, took on the role from 1905-1946. Even though he was absent for much of Great War while serving in the Army, he was able to maintain reasonable contact with the office and the magazine continued to flourish.
The Sketch was the mother of a group of magazines known as the “mid-weeklies” (due to their publication each Wednesday) and was the first of its kind to cover “society” news. Its aim, according to a description in the ILN in 1928, was to appeal “to the cultivated people who in their leisure moments look for light reading and amusing pictures, imbued with a high artistic value”.
This artistic value was well represented during the First World War. The Sketch’s weekly gossip column, “Letters of Phrynette”, was illustrated in a Beardsley style by Gladys Peto. A series of cartoons by William Heath Robinson portrayed hapless Tommies and the perfidious Hun using increasingly outlandish ways to outwit each other.
Other regular artistic contributors included George Studdy, Frank Reynolds, Will Owen and Raphael Kirchner. His sensual “Kirchner Girls”, published exclusively in 1915, were hugely popular with troops at the Front and could claim to be the world’s first illustrated “pin-ups”.
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