Tag: Winston Churchill
V.J. Day – a Contemporary Account
by Laura Bray (née Bevan)
Following on from the account of V.E. Day from Glyn Bevan’s diary which appeared on this blog in May (http://www.merthyr-history.com/?p=4691), to mark the 75th anniversary of V.J. Day, here is an account of the days leading up to V.J. Day and the day itself from Glyn’s diary.
13th August
We put up all our flags and streamers yesterday and have listened to every news today to hear the official announcement of the end of the war. None of us have much doubt about it although it is believed that the Japs in Burma may fight on whether Japan capitulates or not. Rumours all day about peace and premature celebrations all over the U.S., Canada and Australia. Stayed round the supper table talking for ages and then washed up. Continued talking in the drawing room until 01.00.
14th August
All up rather late. Decided to go to Tintern and Symonds Yat before dinner. Came on through the Forest of Dean (where a red squirrel crossed the road) to Monmouth, and then went on down the lovely Wye Valley to Tintern. Unfortunately it was shut but we walked all round the outside of it. A very lovely place and in very good repair. Came on through Chepstow, Caerphilly and Nelson. Celebrations all the way up, several bonfires and a few rockets, floodlighting and illuminating V’s etc. Rumours all day. We fully expected the official announcement on the 9.00 o’clock news. Now we are waiting for Attlee to broadcast at midnight. We are all expecting Japan to agree to our terms of course, and that means peace.
……….
PEACE
Attlee has just announced that Japan has accepted our surrender terms and that tomorrow and the next day will be celebrated as victory days throughout the country. A very matter of fact speech with none of the drama that old Churchill would have put into it. The whole Empire must be sorry that he couldn’t make the announcement. We toasted the new peace with whiskey and wine and cake. Rockets started exploding singly and there was a little shouting. From the bedroom window we could see about 15 bonfires – but none really large. Later on crowds in town sang and danced and prayed until 3.00 o’clock in the morning. Hooters went as well and engines in the station blew their whistles. Several church bells rang including ours (people thundered on the door of the Vicarage, woke the Vicar and pretty well told him to ring it) and there was a peal of bells from the Parish Church. Town filled rapidly and there were crowds there for hours.
15th August
Rain last night, and after a week of very dry weather and the air was cold and clean with smoke drifting up and the sound of church bells in the valley. Very calm and peaceful, fresh and sweet, like a Sunday morning. I read most of the morning and nearly all the afternoon. Listened to a description of the King driving down Whitehall to open Parliament and also went to town where the shops were open till about 10.30. Then came home to find they had all gone to a Thanksgiving Service in Cyfarthfa so we down town to see if there was anything doing. There seemed to be a lot of troops about (nearly all army) but things were fairly quiet. Plenty of flags and streamers. Came back via Thomastown and up the Tramroad in time to hear the King at 21.00. We all went down to the bonfire on the allotments after the news (for which we supplied most of the heavy logs). About 20 good bonfires in the valley and lots of rockets and fireworks but no bells tonight.
16th August
Spent the morning doing little odd jobs that I wanted to clear up before going away. Read after dinner till 15.00 when we decided to go down to Cardiff to see Terence Rattigan’s play “While the Sun Shines”. Play very good. Museum floodlit. A large crowd was dancing and singing in front of the Civic Centre. Bonfires all the way up the valley but not on the same scale as Coronation night. Came through Pontypridd where they had coloured lights strung along both sides of the main streets for about a mile and a well made crown fixed over the bridge. Very poor fireworks, but it is amazing that people have any at all. Saw lots of street teas on the way down.
William Ewart Berry
by Laura Bray
In the series looking at the Berry Brothers, we conclude with a profile of William Ewart Berry, the second and middle son of John and Mary Anne Berry, who was born on 23 June 1870 at 11 Church Street, Merthyr.
The tale is told that William’s journalistic career began after he entered, and won, an essay competition, which so impressed the judge, W.W. Hadley – editor of the “Merthyr Times” – that he gave William a post as a reporter. William was just 14. William clearly had ambition – by the age of 19 he had left Merthyr and had a short term post as a reporter on the “Investor’s Guardian”, for which he was paid 35s a week. That, however, did not last long and William spent three months unemployed, walking the streets and trying freelance work before getting a job as a reporter for the Commercial Press Association. Then, in 1901, aged 22 and using £100 borrowed from his brother Seymour he launched a paper of his own, “Advertising World”. William wrote every word of that first addition. By the second edition he had been joined by his brother, Gomer, and the two were to forge a newspaper partnership that lasted for the next 35 years.
William and Gomer sold “Advertising World” in 1905 for a healthy profit and went onto found “Boxing” and other periodicals during the next few years, all of which they ran successfully. The brothers clearly had an eye for an opportunity – as can be seen in the fact that a seemingly insatiable seven-day demand for news from the western front after the outbreak of the First World War convinced them that the moment was right to acquire the “Sunday Times”, which they bought for £80,000. At the time, sales of the paper had slumped to about 20,000 a week – less than a tenth of “The Observer’s” circulation. By 1937 the “Sunday Times” was outselling its historic rival by nearly 70,000 copies a week.
The purchase in 1919 of the St Clement’s Press, and its City flagship the “Financial Times”, further raised the William’s profile. Not surprisingly, therefore, he and Gomer were assiduously courted by the circle surrounding the then prime minister, David Lloyd-George. One consequence was that in 1921 William Berry became a baronet.
Over the next few years William and Gomer established a vast and diverse media conglomerate; and yet it was not until 1927 that they finally acquired a major London-based daily newspaper. The “Daily Telegraph” and it was with this paper that William’s name was to become most firmly associated. The “Daily Telegraph” had been a great Victorian success story, setting high standards in its news reporting and attracting suburban middle-class readers.A commitment to solid Conservative values, plus a reputation for extensive coverage of both major sporting events and salacious court cases, ensured daily sales of nearly 300,000 by the early 1890s. By the late 1920s, however, sales had slipped to about 84,000, and the “Daily Telegraph” was in urgent need of modernization. Reluctant to invest, the paper’s chief proprietor, Lord Burnham, suggested a quick sale to Allied Newspapers, then owned by the Berry brothers.
Thus on 1 January 1928 William Berry at last assumed editorial responsibility for a ‘quality’ national newspaper with enormous potential. While retaining the “Telegraph”‘s unequivocal centre-right politics, William made key editorial and personnel changes, as well as updating the paper’s type and format. Sales slowly grew, and then doubled to 200,000 after the price was halved to 1d. on 1 December 1930. Within seven years circulation had reached 637,000, and on the eve of the Second World War it had increased to 750,000 by which time William had placed news items onto the front page – a radical, if not pioneering, step.
William was a supporter of Churchill during the late 30s and 40s and for a few weeks after the outbreak of war worked in the Ministry of Information as Chief Assistant to Lord MacMillan, then Minister and Controller of Press Relations. In 1941 Churchill made him Viscount Camrose, named for Camrose in Pembrokeshire where William’s father had been born. Such was the regard between Churchill and William that he was the only non-member of Churchill’s family to dine with him on V.E. Day in 1945. William was also instrumental in organising a “whip round” to buy Churchill his home, Chartwell, for £43,600 (well over a million today) and donated it to the National Trust with the provision that Churchill should live in it for the rest of his life.
In turn, it was Churchill who suggested that William should have a memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral and it was he who unveiled it in May 1956.
William died in 1954 in Royal South Hampshire Hospital, just short of his 75th birthday, from a heart attack. He left a widow, Mary Agnes, his wife of nearly 50 years, and 8 children.
