Churchill's Connections

Lord Rothermere

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1868-1940
Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere
UK publisher

  1. Introduction
  2. Stories
  3. Biographical summary
  4. See also
  5. Further reading
  6. References

1. Introduction

Harold (Lord Rothermere) and his elder brother Alfred (Lord Northcliffe) built up a publishing empire that included the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, The Times, a share of the Daily Express, and many magazines and regional papers. Harold had strong fascist sympathies and believed that Mussolini and Hitler could contain the spread of socialism. He promoted appeasement with Nazi Germany, partly because of having lost two sons in World War I. Nevertheless, he campaigned for British rearmament to strengthen Britain’s hand and contributed substantially to the development of the Blenheim aircraft. He was friends with Churchill for over 20 years, despite their differences, smoothed by their shared belief in the British Empire.

2. Stories

  • Harold Harmsworth joined his elder brother Alfred in his publishing business to create a powerful magazine and newspaper empire.
  • When Churchill was 23 years old, the Daily Mail wrote a prophetic piece about his future career.
  • In addition to publishing, Rothermere’s interests included politics and aviation.
  • Rothermere is known for his strong sympathies for Mussolini and Hitler, and for his attempts at appeasement.
  • Churchill and Rothermere were friends for over two decades, despite some major differences of opinion.
  • Rothermere developed a long-lasting association with Newfoundland, Canada, with the assistance of Mayson Beeton, son of Mrs Beeton, the Victorian writer on household management.
  • The Harmsworths are the only major family from the mid-1900s publishing empires to retain some continuity today.

Harold Harmsworth joined his elder brother Alfred in his publishing business to create a powerful magazine and newspaper empire.

The Harmsworth family had similarities to that of the Berry family (see Lord Camrose). Two brothers with no tertiary education identified opportunities in the world of magazines and newspapers, quickly building up a successful list of publications. They developed political influence as the result of being important opinion-shapers, with three brothers from the same family receiving peerages. In the Harmsworths’ case, Alfred was Lord Northcliffe, Harold was Lord Rothermere and their younger brother Cecil (politician and publisher) was Lord Harmsworth (the Berry peers were Lords Buckland, Camrose and Kemsley).* In addition, two younger Harmsworth brothers received knighthoods, Sir Leicester (MP and publisher) and Sir Hildebrand (publisher), the latter possibly as part of a cash-for-honours scandal under David Lloyd George.

The eldest brother Alfred (family nickname ‘Sunny’) began as a freelance journalist in 1880 and had a natural instinct for what the public wanted to read, launching a series of low-priced periodicals. He was joined by his brother Harold (family nickname ‘Bunny’) in 1888 after a position as a Board of Trade clerk, adding financial astuteness to Alfred’s entrepreneurial flair. Together they developed a strong cashflow from their magazine company Amalgamated Press.

In 1894, they purchased the struggling Evening News and turned it around. Two years later they launched the Daily Mail, aimed at busy lower-middle class clerks on their way to work, using catchy headlines, carefully chosen sales points and new printing and communications technology. In 1903 they launched The Daily Mirror; in 1905 they bought The Observer (but sold it in 1912); and in 1908 they purchased The Times, running most of their newspaper interests through Associated Newspapers (now DMG Media).

Upon Alfred’s death in 1922 (from heart disease, aged 57), Harold sold The Times and bought 49 per cent of the Daily Express and Sunday Express from Lord Beaverbrook. He sold Amalgamated Press to the Berry brothers in 1926 and became involved in a financially damaging regional press trade war in the 1920s. He sold his interests in Beaverbrook’s papers in 1931 and handed control of Associated Newspapers to his son Esmond in 1932.

When Churchill was 23 years old, the Daily Mail wrote a prophetic piece about his future career.

In December 1898, two years after the Harmsworths had launched the Daily Mail, it made some prescient comments about the young Winston. At the time, Churchill had written some magazine and newspaper accounts about his experiences in conflicts in Cuba, India and Sudan, as well as The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898), a book about the military campaign on India’s north-west frontier. He had not yet participated in the Second Boer War and had only made a couple of minor political speeches. As a low-ranking soldier and writer of moderate repute, he was a somewhat unknown quantity other than being the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, who had a mixed reputation after resigning as the chancellor of the exchequer in 1896.

However, in a Daily Mail piece entitled 20th Century Men, Some Peeps at Futurity, G.W. Steevens wrote anonymously that Winston had ‘qualities which might make him, almost at will, a great popular leader, a great journalist, or the founder of a great advertising business. […] What he will become, who shall say? At the rate he goes there will hardly be room for him in Parliament at thirty or in England at forty. It is a pace that cannot last, yet already he holds a vast lead of his contemporaries.’1

Steevens even seemed to anticipate Churchill’s 1904 change of political party, six years in advance: ‘At present he calls himself a Tory Democrat. Tory – the opinions – might change; democrat – the methods – never.’2 As Steevens feared, Churchill’s pace was too quick and resulted in some collisions, and he did not play his full role on the world stage until he was in his sixties.

Churchill himself anticipated, as a 16-year-old, a great destiny for himself, leading the defence of London and the British Empire against foreign attack (see Kay Halle). Within a year of Steevens’s article, Churchill’s Boer War exploits had resulted in him superseding Steevens as the UK’s best-known war correspondent. A year after his article on Churchill, he lost his life to typhoid during the siege of Ladysmith, which Churchill helped to liberate six weeks after his fellow-correspondent’s death.

In addition to publishing, Rothermere’s interests included politics and aviation.

Rothermere’s first significant venture outside publishing was during World War I when he was asked to be director-general of the Royal Army Clothing Department (1916-17) which was a factory and warehouse in Pimlico in central London that supplied military uniforms. This was followed by a ministerial role as president of the Air Council (1917-18), a precursor to the position of secretary of state for air that Churchill held in 1919 to 1921. Despite Rothermere’s resignation after disagreements with colleagues, this gave him an early insight into the growing importance of aircraft capacity in military conflicts. He was the first political head of the Royal Air Force, formed on 1 April 1918, although he resigned 26 days later after disputes with Hugh Trenchard, chief of the air staff.

Like Churchill, Rothermere was a strong supporter of the British empire. In 1930, he joined Beaverbrook’s campaign for free trade within the empire and for higher tariffs with non-empire countries (see Lord Beaverbrook). He supported Beaverbrook’s short-lived United Empire Party (1930-31) that campaigned against the Conservatives, whose leader Stanley Baldwin he believed to be overly sympathetic to nationalists, particularly in India.

During the 1930s, Rothermere supported UK aviation rearmament while being highly pessimistic about the UK’s military prospects against Germany and Italy. Although rearmament would strengthen Britain’s hand somewhat, he did not view it being enough to provide much resistance. In 1934 he commissioned the fastest aircraft in Europe for his own travel and for the development of commercial aviation. The Bristol Type 142 could reach 307 mph (495 kph), 30 mph (50 kph) more than the fastest UK fighter at the time. He presented a prototype, called ‘Britain First’, to the air ministry, which modified the design and produced the Bristol Blenheim Mk I. The Blenheim served a vital wartime role as a light bomber, fighter and reconnaissance aircraft.

In 1940, as minister of air production, Beaverbrook asked Rothermere to visit Canada and the USA to encourage aircraft manufacture there but he became ill in New York. He travelled to Bermuda to recuperate but deteriorated and died of dropsy (fluid retention) in November 1940, aged 72.

Rothermere is known for his strong sympathies for Mussolini and Hitler, and for his attempts at appeasement.

Rothermere’s primary concerns were the potential spread of Bolshevism and the avoidance of war with Germany. He felt that right-wing organisations and governments could overcome the former, and his view on the latter was influenced by the deaths of two of his three sons in World War I.

In 1923, he wrote ‘What Europe Owes to Mussolini’ in the Daily Mail, saying, ‘in saving Italy he stopped the inroads of Bolshevism which would have left Europe in ruins […] In my judgement he saved the whole Western world.’3 He welcomed the Nazi success in the 1930 election in Germany. In 1934, he wrote a Daily Mail article entitled ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’, supporting Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (see UK fascist groups).

Rothermere met and corresponded with Hitler, praising him for regenerating Germany, congratulating him on annexing part of Czechoslovakia and encouraging him to invade Romania. He made several appeals for the avoidance of war between Germany and Britain. In 1939 he asked Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, to arrange an international peace conference, saying, ‘There is really no cleavage between the interests of Germany and Britain. This great world of ours is big enough for both countries.’4

Rothermere’s attempts to act as peace broker included paying an annual £5,000 retainer (equivalent to £350,000 today) to Stephanie von Hohenlohe, an Austro-Hungarian princess by marriage who had close relationships with Nazi leaders. She moved to the UK from Paris in 1932 and developed influential relationships with the British aristocracy. Living in the Dorchester Hotel, she became known to some as ‘London’s leading Nazi hostess’.5

Rothermere’s relationship with von Hohenlohe may also have prompted his campaign for Hungary to reclaim the territory that it lost after World War I and for its monarchy to be restored. The Hungarians were so delighted that it is said he was asked to become monarch himself but declined, requesting instead an honorary degree for his son Esmond.

Rothermere terminated his payments to von Hohenlohe shortly before the declaration of war, whereupon she sued him but lost the case. Since he died early in the war, it is not known if he would have revised his appeasement views as the conflict progressed.

Churchill and Rothermere were friends for over two decades, despite some major differences of opinion.

Churchill’s relationship with the Harmsworths began initially with Alfred (Lord Northcliffe), who supported Winston’s first political campaign as a Conservative in 1899 by driving him around Oldham, near Manchester. Churchill and Alfred played golf and got on well until the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, when they fell out after the Mail’s strong criticism of Churchill’s role. Harold (Lord Rothermere) took a different view. In 1916, Churchill wrote to Clementine, saying, ‘I had a nice letter from Rothermere – saying that “I had emerged unscathed from Gallipoli”’,6 which gave him a considerable lift.

In the 1930s, Rothermere’s support for European fascism and dim view of the UK’s military prospects were a considerable frustration for Churchill. On the other hand, his support for UK aviation rearmament and for the continuing role of the empire were redeeming factors in Churchill’s eyes, as was Rothermere’s strong dislike of socialism.

Although Churchill disagreed with Rothermere’s promotion of appeasement, he understood some of its motivation. During World War I, he visited Rothermere in his suite at the Ritz hotel, London. Rothermere had already lost his middle son Vere on the Western Front. His eldest son Vyvyan was staying with his father while on leave from battle. Full of pride, Rothermere took Churchill to see him, fast asleep, tiptoeing in and out of his room. Vyvyan was killed shortly afterwards, and Churchill told the story wistfully many years later.

In 1935, Winston wrote to Clementine: ‘Rothermere offered me two bets. First, £2,000 [£143,000 today] if I went teetotal in 1936. I refused as I did not think life would be worth living. I have, however, accepted his second bet of £600 [£43,000 today] not to drink any brandy. It was kind of the old boy to take so much interest.’7 It is not clear who won the bet. The ‘old boy’ was only six years older, and in the end Churchill outlived him by 25 years.

Churchill enjoyed staying at Rothermere’s villa La Dragonnière on the Riviera. In 2012, a 1937 Churchill painting of the villa was sold for £265,250, and in 2018 another of his paintings of the villa from the same year fetched £358,000.

Rothermere developed a long-lasting association with Newfoundland, Canada, with the assistance of Mayson Beeton, son of Mrs Beeton, the Victorian writer on household management.

In 1902, Alfred asked Harold to investigate the possibility of owning their own newsprint supply. A week later, Harold and Mayson Beeton, a Mail journalist, boarded a ship to Canada, with Harold proceeding to Quebec while Beeton visited Newfoundland. They selected Grand Falls on the Exploits River in central Newfoundland, where a pulp and paper mill was constructed by a Harmsworth subsidiary, the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company (‘AND’). Mayson Beeton was the first president of AND, which purchased 3,100 square miles (8,000 square kilometers) of forest and made its first paper shipment in 1909. The mill operated for 100 years and helped Grand Falls to earn the title of World Forestry Capital in 1988.

During World War I, Beeton was appointed director of timber supplies in the UK, part of the War Office. Wood was vital for use in the trenches and for aircraft construction. He helped to establish the Newfoundland Forestry Corps of 500 volunteers who assisted in the harvest of trees in Scotland which had been planted for future military purposes after depletion in the early 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars.

Beeton’s mother Isabella (née Mayson) became a household name as ‘Mrs Beeton’ from the 1860s after publishing recipes and household management guidance with her husband, Samuel. Samuel had established himself in the literary world by publishing the popular antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Boy’s Own Magazine (1855-90). Mrs Beeton died from post-natal complications eight days after Mayson was born in 1865, but her reputation continued to grow long after her death, with ‘Mrs Beeton’ becoming synonymous with Victorian middle-class domesticity. Her Book of Household Management (1861) was expanded after her death and is still in print.

An earlier but now lesser-known recipe publisher was Eliza Acton, whose Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) introduced lists of ingredients and cooking times, now a standard practice in today’s recipes. Several of her recipes were plagiarised by Isabella Beeton. Acton was an inspiration for modern-day author and TV presenter Delia Smith, who described her as ‘the best writer of recipes in the English language’.8

The Harmsworths are the only major family from the mid-1900s publishing empires to retain some continuity today.

Harold’s third son Esmond was aide-de-camp to prime minister David Lloyd George at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919-20 and served as a Conservative MP from 1919 to 1929. He took over the running of his father’s publishing business in 1932, although Harold retained his influence until his death in 1940. Less flamboyant than his father, Esmond, 2nd Viscount Rothermere, managed the business well for nearly 40 years, retiring in 1970 with Alzheimer’s disease. He married three times; his second wife Ann subsequently married Ian Fleming, the inventor of James Bond.

Esmond was succeeded by his son Vere who became 3rd Viscount Rothermere upon Esmond’s death in 1978. He reinvented the Daily Mail as a tabloid, after previously being a broadsheet, and launched the Mail on Sunday in 1982.

Vere died in 1998 of a heart attack while dining with his son Jonathan, now 4th Viscount Rothermere. Jonathan is the chairman and majority shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc which controls many of his great-grandfather’s legacy publications. It also has interests in other publications, insurance and events management.

Harold’s nephew Cecil King (son of sister Geraldine) rose in the ranks of the Daily Mirror group, taking it leftwards and making it more working class. However, King became disillusioned with Labour prime minister Harold Wilson and proposed a form of coup in 1968 by asking Lord Louis Mountbatten to take charge of the country if Wilson were to be deposed through civil unrest. Mountbatten viewed this as treasonous and King was soon removed by his board for breaching Mirror editorial independence.

Harold’s younger brother St John sold his share in the family business to buy a mineral water spa and spring in southern France from a local doctor called Louis Perrier. St John was paralyzed in a car accident in 1906 and started using ‘Indian clubs’ (bowling pin-shaped wooden weights) for exercise, later using their shape for the design of the now-iconic Perrier water bottle.

3. Biographical summary

OccupationNewspaper magnate
CountryUK
CareerClerk, Board of Trade (from c.1883). Joined elder brother Alfred’s magazine business (1888) and helped to build Amalgamated Press. Co-purchased the Evening News (1894). Co-founded the Daily Mail with Alfred (1898). Co-owner of Associated Newspapers with Alfred (1905; 100% owner after Alfred’s death in 1922). Purchased Daily Mirror from Alfred (1913). Director-General, Royal Army Clothing Department (1916-17). President of the Air Council (1917-18). Sold the Times (1922). Owned 49% of Beaverbrook’s Daily Express and Sunday Express (1922-31). Sold Amalgamated Press to Berry brothers (1926). Commissioned prototype of Blenheim bomber (1934). Passed control of Associated Newspapers to son Esmond (1937).
Born1868 in 6 Alexandra Terrace, St John’s Wood, London (six years older than Churchill)
FatherAlfred Harmsworth (1837-1889), barrister; died aged 52 of cirrhosis of the liver
MotherGeraldine Maffett (1838-1925), daughter of an Irish land agent
SiblingsThird of fourteen children (three died in infancy):
1. Alfred (1865-1922), 1st Viscount Northcliffe, ‘Sunny’, publishing magnate; bought the Evening News (1894); launched the Daily Mail (1898) and Daily Mirror (1903); principal proprietor of The Times (1908-22); Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries (1918)
2. Geraldine (1866-1945); married Sir Lucas King; son Cecil King, chairman of Daily Mirror Newspapers
3. Harold Sidney (1868-1940)
4. Cecil (1869-1948), 1st Baron Harmsworth, Liberal politician and publisher; chairman of Associated Newspapers; a director of Amalgamated Newspapers
5. Leicester (1870-1937), Liberal MP; a director of Amalgamated Press
6. Hildebrand (1872-1929), unsuccessfully stood to be a Liberal MP
7. Violet (1873-1961); married Lt-Col Wilfrid Wild
8. Charles ‘Dick’ (1874-1942)
9. St John (1876-1933), owner and promoter of Perrier mineral water; died age 56, unmarried
10. Maud (1877); died in infancy
11. Christabel Rose (c.1880-1967); married Lt-Col Percy Burton
12. Vyvyan (1881-1957); temporary captain in the Royal Army Service Corps
13. Muriel (1882); died in infancy
14. Harry (1885); died in infancy
EducationSt Marylebone Grammar School, Marylebone, London (incomplete)
SpouseLilian Share (1874-1937), m. 1893 until her death; estranged for over 20 years; daughter of a bankrupt City hardware merchant; she had an affair with Rothermere’s brother St John
RelationshipsVarious
Children1. Harold (1894-1918); captain; died aged 23 from wounds received in action
2. Vere (1895-1916); lieutenant; died aged 21, killed in action
3. Esmond (1898-1978), 2nd Viscount Rothermere, Conservative politician and press magnate; 3 marriages and 4 children; his second wife Ann Charteris later married James Bond author Ian Fleming
Died1940 in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Paget, Bermuda, aged 72 (25 years before Churchill); on vacation after shortening a business visit to USA and Canada due to illness
BuriedSt Paul’s churchyard, Paget, Bermuda
Chartwell 
Other ClubYes
NicknameBunny (family)
Height 

4. See also

Other publishers

Other UK fascist sympathisers

War correspondence and broadcasting

  • Murrow, Ed
  • Smuts, Jan (Churchill in the Second Boer War)

Churchill controversies

  • Anti-appeasement
  • Imperialism

5. Further reading

The Harmsworth family

  • Bourne, Richard, Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (Taylor & Francis, 2015)
  • Find a Grave, ‘Harold Sidney Harmsworth (1868-1940)’, Find a Grave.
  • Taylor, Sally J., The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)

Rothermere and fascism

  • Pugh, Martin, Hurrah For The Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (Random House, 2013)[3]
  • Wilson, Jim, Nazi Princess: Hitler, Lord Rothermere and Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe (History Press, 2011)

Rothermere and the UK press

  • Addison, Adrian, Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail – The Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (Atlantic Books, 2017)
  • Curran, James, and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain (Taylor & Francis, 2018)

Churchill and the press

  • Read, Simon, Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent (Hachette Books, 2015)
  • Toye, Richard, Winston Churchill: A Life in the News (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Churchill paintings of Rothermere’s villa

Miscellaneous

  • Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Center, ‘The Harmsworth Connection’, Virtual Museum.
  • Hardy, Sheila M., The Real Mrs Beeton: The Story of Eliza Acton (History Press, 2011)
  • Hughes, Kathryn, The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton (Fourth Estate, 2005)
  • Warner, Graham, The Bristol Blenheim: A Complete History (Crécy, 2005)

6. References

1. Peter Stansky, Churchill: A Profile (Macmillan Education, 1973), pp. 18, 20.

2. Stansky, p. 20.

3. Martin Pugh, Hurrah For The Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (Random House, 2013), p. 41.

4. Lord Rothermere, ‘Lord Rothermere to Rudolf Hess’, The National Archives, 1939.

5. Robert Verkaik, ‘Rothermere Urged Hitler to Invade Romania’, Independent, 2005.

6. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 156.

7. Churchill and Churchill, p. 405.

8. BBC, ‘Delia Dusts off Old Recipes’, WalesOnline, 2004.