Arthur J. Cummings

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Arthur John Cummings (born May 22, 1882 in Barnstaple , † July 4, 1957 in London ) was a British journalist.

Life and activity

Cummings was the third of five children of journalist John Cummings and his wife Maria Elizabeth Richards. His younger brother was Bruce Cummings. Instead of going to school, he was privately tutored.

He embarked on a journalistic career and worked successively for the Devon & Exeter Gazette , Rochdale Observer , Sheffield Telegraph and Yorkshire Post . In 1920 he became Assistant Editor (Assistant Editor) of the New Chronicle newspaper in London. Other sources say he joined the Daily News in 1921 and came to the Daily News through its merger with the News Chronicle in 1930. From 1933 until he retired in 1955, Cummings was the political editor and chief commentator of the left-liberal daily newspaper. His "Spotlight2" column was one of the most widely read political columns in the country in the 1930s.

High-profile events reported by Cummings were the Metro-Vickers trial against British engineers in Moscow (1933) and the Leipzig Reichstag fire trial (also 1933).

At the end of the 1930s, his political orientation against the Nazi regime in Germany, as reflected in his foreign policy columns, brought Cummings into the sights of the National Socialist police forces, who classified him as an important target: in the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin set him up the special wanted list GB , a directory of persons who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, were to be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special commandos of the SS with special priority.

From 1952 to 1953, Cummings was President of the Institute of Journalists in parallel with his work for the Chronicle .

As an appearance, Cummings is described in a relevant monograph on leading British press people of his time as a "slender, tall man with a narrow face and piercing eyes" who looked like a "born leader".

family

Since October 19, 1915, Cummings was married to Nora Buddards, with whom he produced two children.

literature

  • World Biography , Vol. 1, 1948, p. 1296.
  • "Arthur John Cummings. Warrior of the Written Word", in: The Journal Institutes of Journalists , 1957, vol. 45/46, p. 69.

Fonts

  • The Moscow Trial , 1933 (with Allan Monkhouse)
  • Portraits and Pamphlets , 1935. (Foreword)
  • The Press and a Changing Civilization , 1936.
  • This England , 1944.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Cummings on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum) .
  2. ↑ Linton Andrews / Henry Archibald Taylor: Lords and Laborers of the Press: Men who fashioned the Modern British Newspaper , p. 220 ("slimly straight, lean-faced, with closely scrutinizing eyes, he looked like a Born leader.").
personal data
SURNAME Cummings, Arthur J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cummings, Arthur John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Barnstaple
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1957
Place of death London