Land and Water
Land and Water was the title of a British magazine best known for its commentary on the
Title history of Land and Water
The British Library's catalogue traces the magazine that became Land and Water back to 1862, with the founding of the "town and country newspaper" known as The Sporting Gazette. According to the British Library's tracing, the magazine continued in 1879 as The Sporting Gazette and Agricultural Journal, in 1880 as The County Gentleman, Sporting Gazette and Agricultural Journal, then in 1903 as The County Gentleman, in 1905 as The County Gentleman and Land and Water" However, between 1866 and 1905 at least, Land and Water existed as a separate title – "Land and Water, The Landed Interest, Field Sports, & County Families Organ", and featured a mix of advertisements and articles ranging from London clubs to venues and dates for hare coursing. The Saturday 17 July 1897 issue was marked Vol LXIV No 1643. The issue dated Saturday 9 February 1901 was Vol LXXXI no 1,829, and bore the same header although by then it was printed in blue ink rather than black.
The earliest mention of a Land and Water magazine in the British Library catalogue is for "a journal of field sport, sea, river fisheries and practical natural history, incorporated with The Country Gentleman", beginning in 1866. (A "nature magazine" of the same name was started by Irish fishery reformer
Another wholly unrelated magazine sharing the same title was published by Amy Dencklau from 1974 to 2017 in Fort Dodge, Iowa.[4]
Land and Water: The World's War
In 1914, the magazine's coverage shifted to World War I. The change was initiated by James Murray "Jim" Allison, then advertisement manager of The Times. Until 1916, the magazine would continue to be published as County Gentleman and Land & Water, but issues from the start of the war onward were later bound in volumes titled Land and Water, subtitled "The World's War". Issues of the magazine from 1916 onward were simply titled Land and Water.
The World War I Land and Water was edited by the well-known
Belloc, always a forthright and bellicose writer, excelled in warlike editorials and stirring articles. He had always had considerable dislike for the Germans, going back to his French antecedents and to having served in the French Army at the time when French bitterness over the loss of
The journal was charged with highly inflated estimates of enemy casualties, and Belloc's over-optimistic estimates of when the war would end with an Allied victory were several times proved premature – which did not harm its popularity. On one occasion during the war Belloc is known to have confidentially told G. K. Chesterton, with whom he was friendly, that "it is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation".
During the war the magazine also employed Arthur Pollen as writer on naval issues.
After the end of the war, the journal continued covering world events, such as the Treaty of Versailles and the Russian Civil War, where Belloc strongly supported an intervention to crush the Bolsheviks. However, in 1920 it ceased publication, and was absorbed by The Field, thus returning to its sporting roots. The Field is still published today.
References
- . Retrieved 15 May 2022.
- ^ Country Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. IX, 1872.
- ^ See, e.g. The County Gentleman and Land & Water, Vol. LXIV, No. 2740, November 14, 1914.
- ^ Dencklau, Amy. "Land and Water - Our Journey." Land and Water, Vol. 61, No. 10, March/April 2017, pp. 8-9. Archived from the original.
- ^ "Georgetown University Library Finding aid of "Hilaire Belloc - Allison Family Collection"". Georgetown University Library. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
External links
- Land and Water digital archive, 1914-1918 at The Online Books Page via HathiTrust and the Internet Archive