Hannen Swaffer

[4] While at Folkestone he read Robert Blatchford's book of socialist essays, Merrie England, and adopted its left-wing views for the rest of his life.

[4] After further experience in provincial journalism, he joined the Daily Mail in 1902, and worked for its proprietor Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) for the next seventeen years.

[6] The Manchester Guardian commented on Swaffer's "air of self-importance equal to that of Bernard Shaw himself … he raised professional egotism to a fine art.

"[6] Described by The Times as "something of a poseur", he was conspicuous for his flamboyant clothes, and was, according to The British Journalism Review, "remembered for little more than the mixture of dandruff and cigarette ash on his velvet collar, and for defining freedom of the press as 'freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to'.

[5] On the other hand, a study of the press and the holocaust highlighted his "solitary voice of protest" and outrage in the Daily Herald against mass pogroms of Jews in Poland.