Many years ago, around 1985 I would guess, I bought a pile of newspaper clippings covering most of the First World War from an antique shop on Mansfield Road, Nottingham, England, all neatly cut out and pasted on thick paper in chronological order. The clippings cost me £15-00, quite a lot of money in terms of my spending power of the day. The earliest clipping is 19 August 1914. Archduke Franz Ferdinanad had been assasinated (28 June 1914); Britain had declared war on Germany (4 August 1914); The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had arrived in France (7 August 1914); and the first major encounter by the British, the battle of Mons was about to be fought (23 August 1914).
The newspaper reports carry an immediacy not found in the formal printed texts, though as history, they should not be read literally, but in the context of censorship and the fact that they were snapshots based upon the available information on the day.
It should also be noted that the dates at the head of each newspaper report do not correspond to the activities on those days - some reports will have taken days to reach publication.
These pages are dedicated to my grandfather, John Walker, a soldier of The Great War.