THE FRONT PAGE: HOW THE DAILY TELEGRAPH REPORTED VE DAY

How the Daily Telegraph’s Keep Calm and Carry On spirit reigned throughout the Second World War, by Telegraph librarian Gavin Fuller

THE NEWSPAPER PRINTED AS NORMAL THROUGHOUT THE WAR on Monday to Saturday (there was no Sunday edition back then), except for Good Friday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and apart from

10 May 1945 when the London morning papers did not publish. Seventyfive years on, the reason why is lost to time.

THE NUMBER OF PAGES SHRANK ON ACCOUNT OF A LACK OF NEWSPRINT. Most of it came from Canada and there were supply issues, so newspapers worked together to ration its usage. The Daily Telegraph reduced from 30-plus pages to just 14 when war broke out in September 1939. By July 1940, the paper comprised six pages, with the Saturday issue limited to just four pages – stories had to be crammed into a much smaller space and brevity was the order of the day.

THE CIRCULATION ALSO REDUCED CONSIDERABLY... but the proprietor at the time, Lord Camrose, believed that it was ‘far better that five people should read a Daily

Telegraph true to its character and traditions than that six should read what could in four pages be, at the best, only an approximation to it’. He also expressed the hope that those who did receive a copy should share it ‘wherever practicable with less fortunate friends’.

THE NEWSPAPER WEATHER FORECAST WAS CENSORED during both world wars, as this was deemed to be of possible help to the enemy. As the front page of this 9 May issue reports, this embargo was lifted on VE Day.

THE TELEGRAPH CROSSWORD CONTINUED AS NORMAL during the war, and in 1942 was surreptitiously used as a recruiting tool for Station X at Bletchley Park codebreaking HQ.

PHOTOGRAPHS WERE IN SHORT SUPPLY, and were often published much smaller than before the war, as a result of the restrictions placed on the paper. So a photo stretching across the entire front page, like this one showing the Royal family and Winston Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on 9 May 1945, was extremely rare – and would continue to be rare for many years to come.

THE TELEGRAPH OFFICES WERE DAMAGED BY INCENDIARY BOMBS on the night of 29 December 1940, but escaped damage when a landmine hit the roof in April 1941 and a parachute mine landed in an adjacent alley in September 1944. Aside from an aircraft-spotting team established on the roof by the company’s financial secretary HJC Stevens, there is no evidence of any precautions taken to ensure the London office’s operations could continue unhindered during the war. However, a Manchester edition was introduced in October 1940 both to improve nationwide coverage, and also to have backup should its London printing presses be put out of action.

SIXTEEN TELEGRAPH STAFF MEMBERS WERE KILLED IN ACTION DURING THE WAR, four more died in service and two in air raids. Others died of natural causes, including one member of the machine room who had worked for the paper for 57 years. Many staff members were called up during the war, but as most senior management were too old for this, the running of the paper continued generally unhindered.