Herbert Wrigley Wilson (1866 – 12 July 1940), known often only as H. W. Wilson, was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and naval historian. The eldest son of the Reverend George Edwin Wilson (Vicar of St. John's,

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...

, in

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, and later of

Great Missenden Great Missenden is an affluent village with approximately 2,000 residents in the Misbourne Valley in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England, situated between the towns of Amersham and Wendover, with direct rail connections to London Mar ...

in Buckinghamshire) and Cecilia Wrigley, Wilson was educated at

Durham School Durham School is an independent boarding and day school in the English public school tradition located in Durham, North East England and was an all-boys institution until 1985, when girls were admitted to the sixth form. The school takes pupils ...

and

Trinity College, Oxford (That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody) , named_for = The Holy Trinity , established = , sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge , president = Dame Hilary Boulding , location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH , coordinates ...

. Like three of his five brothers, he became a journalist. According to the memoirs of his brother G. H. Wilson, editor of the ''

Cape Times The ''Cape Times'' is an English-language morning newspaper owned by Independent News & Media SA and published in Cape Town, South Africa. the newspaper had a daily readership of 261 000 and a circulation of 34 523. By the fourth quarter of ...

'', H. W. Wilson was "chief leader writer" and assistant editor of the '' Daily Mail'' from 1898 until his death during 1940. According to the newspaper's owner,

Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe Alfred Charles William Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (15 July 1865 – 14 August 1922), was a British newspaper and publishing magnate. As owner of the '' Daily Mail'' and the ''Daily Mirror'', he was an early developer of popular journa ...

, Wilson was the "mental backbone of the newspaper". From 1914 to 1919, Wilson was joint editor with

John Alexander Hammerton Sir John Alexander Hammerton (27 February 1871, in Alexandria, Scotland – 12 May 1949, in London) is described by the ''Dictionary of National Biography'' as "the most successful creator of large-scale works of reference that Britain has known" ...

of the periodical ''The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict'', published by the

Amalgamated Press The Amalgamated Press (AP) was a British newspaper and magazine publishing company founded by journalist and entrepreneur Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922) in 1901, gathering his many publishing ventures together under one banner. At one point the ...

. The first volume was largely concerned with justifying Britain's entry into the war, and with encouraging the British people to sign up and fight. In its entirety, it ran to 13 volumes.Hammerton, Sir John Alexander (ed.), ''A Popular History of the Great War. I: The First Phase: 1914'', London: The Amalgamated Press, Ltd. (1933) Other than his newspaper work, Wilson was also co-author, with

William Le Queux William Tufnell Le Queux ( , ; 2 July 1864 – 13 October 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat (honorary consul for San Marino), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officia ...

, of a novel entitled '' The Invasion of 1910'' (1906), and was the author of numerous books about naval and military history: * ''The Protection of Our Commerce in War'' (1896) * ''Ironclads in Acton'' (1897) * ''The Forthcoming Naval Review and Its Predecessors'' (1897) * ''The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present'' (7 vols., 1897–1903) * ''Nelson and His Times'' (1898) * ''When War Breaks Out'' (1898) * ''The Growth of the World's Armaments'' (1898) * ''The Naval Situation with Textual Tables'' (1899) * ''Adam Duncan (1731–1804)'' (1899) * ''The Downfall of Spain'' (1900) * ''With the Flag to Pretoria'' (1900–01) * ''After Pretoria'' (1902) * ''New Light on Napoleon's Invasion Projects'' (1902) * ''Mr. Chamberlain's New Policy'' (1903) * ''Japan's Fight for Freedom'' (1905) * ''The Great War'' (13 vols., 1914–19) * ''Convicted Out of Her Own Mouth: The Record of German Crimes'' (1917) * ''Battleships in Action'' (1919) * ''Hush, or the Hydrophone Service'' (1920) * ''Northcliffe House'' (1927) * ''The War Guilt'' (1928) * ''His Majesty the King'' (1935)

References

External links

''Ironclads in Action: A Sketch of Naval Warfare from 1855 to 1895, Vol. 2''
1896
''The Downfall of Spain: Naval History of the Spanish–American War''
1900 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Herbert Wrigley 1866 births 1940 deaths British male journalists British historians Naval historians People educated at Durham School Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford Daily Mail journalists