Abstract
Looking at the press and popular culture in interwar Europe raises questions concerning the distinctive features of the media in particular countries as opposed to features of development and change which they had in common, along with the requisite characteristics of a transnational news event in Europe. The benefit of bringing different case studies together is that it enables us to tackle such questions and discover points of convergence together with points of divergence. With sensationalism, for example, certain common themes and forms developed on a cross-national basis. In this collection, Sarah Newman looks at the emergence of the celebrity gossip columnist between the wars, a development that seems to provide clear evidence of the further de-politicisation of the popular press, yet in Britain at least, Adrian Bingham shows in his essay the continuing importance of political questions in the journalism of such national newspapers as the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Mail. Mark Hampton’s enjoyable chapter reinforces this point by focusing on David Low’s cartoons and their treatment of unemployment during the interwar period. Véronique Pouillard and Jessica Woodhaugh attend to the human interest story and personal journalism in France, while Bianca Gaudenzi’s focus is on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, assessing the politicisation of press advertising in relation to images of womanhood. The essay by Heidi Tworek analyses news agencies in Austria, Britain, France, Germany and Poland, looking in particular at their transnational interactions. The final chapter in the volume by Dale Zacher discusses the news reporting of Edward J. Meeman, an American reporter who visited Germany when the Nazis consolidated their power in 1933. The book as a whole collects together some fascinating short essays and does so on the basis of the editorial claim that ‘Europe matters’. The chapters fully substantiate this claim.