“The Mirror with a Memory”: The Great War through the Lens of Percy Brown, British Correspondent and Photojournalist (1914-1920)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the “path of crazy paving” of Percy A. Brown, a British working-class carpenter, figure skater, photo correspondent, and magazine journalist, who covered the twentieth century’s first mass media war. Brown—who is not yet a household name in terms of British war correspondents—would go on to become an international reporter, successful author, and Fleet Street personality. His personal history and biography exemplify at once the demands of war correspondents and photographers, and the professional and personal challenges that mediated these experiences. Brown’s story shows how the First World War (1914–1918) affected people’s lives, not just on the battlefields and trenches, but also those covering the conflict. By backtracking this journalist’s nontraditional career, this article focuses on Brown’s coverage of the Western Front, his time in the Ruhleben prison camp, and his work at the Paris Peace Conference. The historical analysis rests on primary sources and Percy Brown’s collection of pictures, news clippings, correspondence, and notes located at the Hoover Institution and Archives at Stanford University. Brown’s journalism and his personal writings all communicate the immediacy with which he wrote, reported, and lived.