In
1937 Stefan Lorant,
the photo
journalist,
launched Lilliput with £1,200
lent to him by a girl friend. Although it sold well it carried no
advertising and lost money. Sydney Jacobson
joined the magazine and invested his savings in the venture.
Unable
to make a profit the magazine was sold to Edward
Hulton for £20,000 in 1938. When Lorant emigrated
to the United States in 1940 Tom
Hopkinson took over as editor. Contributors included Julian
Huxley, Stephen Spender, John
Betjeman, Compton
Mackenzie,
Osbert Lancaster, Arthur
Koestler, Bill Brandt, Bert
Hardy, Walter
Trier, Robert
Graves and Walter de la Mare.
(1)
Tom
Hopkinson,
Of
This Our Time (1982)
Besides my work on Picture
Post, I had also since 1941 been responsible for Lilliput,
the pocket magazine started by Stefan Lorant to which some six years
earlier I had vainly tried to contribute in the hope of earning three
guineas. Lilliput was a delightful little publication, well
printed, with an attractive coloured cover always drawn by the same
artist, Walter Trier. One of its best-known features was the 'doubles'
- two look-alike photographs on facing pages, a pouter pigeon
opposite a cadet on parade with his chest thrown out; Hitler giving
the Nazi salute to a small dog with its paw raised; a bear opposite
a publican with a pear-shaped face.
In wartime particularly,
Lilliput was an easy magazine to sell. It made no demands.
It did not attack or criticize. It simply
made one laugh, providing a couple of hours of easy enjoyment. Writers,
artists and photographers seemed happy to work for it despite the
ridiculously low fees it paid, and the sales soared before long into
the hundreds of thousands. One of the theories on which the magazine
operated was that all kinds of well-known people who don't normally
write articles - archbishops and admirals, sportsmen and scientists,
film stars and prime ministers - have some personal interest they
will be happy to write about if asked. It may be the only article
you will ever get from them, but at least it will make your contributors'
page impressive.
Bill Brandt, today a venerated
father-figure in photography, took many picture series for Lilliput,
photographing young
poets, taking pictures on film sets, in pubs, in Soho, in the London
parks. One day in the summer of 1942 we suggested to him that these
wartime nights offered a unique opportunity to photograph London entirely
by moonlight. Because of the blackout there was no street lighting,
no car headlamps, no light of any kind; never in history had there
been such a chance, and once the war ended it would never come again.
He returned to us weeks later with a beautiful set of mysterious photographs
out of which we made ten pages. He had been obliged to give exposures
of up to half an hour, and had once found himself suddenly surrounded
by police. An old lady had seen him standing beside his camera mounted
on its tripod, and dialled 999 to say there was a man in the road
with a dangerous machine.
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