‘What is the British Navy doing?’ The Royal Navy’s image problem in War Illustrated magazine

Abstract

This paper examines the problematic representation of the Royal Navy and its war roles in the popular magazine War Illustrated, between the outbreak of the First World War and the Battle of Jutland. The difficulties affecting the illustration of the Navy’s contribution and responsibilities within the mushrooming conflict are fore-grounded in this publication, which records and depicts the war’s events through reportage, editorials, photography and the work of war artists. Against a backdrop of failure and stalemate in the battles on land, the magazine’s negotiation of conflicting requirements of propaganda, politics and patriotic investment in the Navy produces a complex, critical portrait of the Senior Service in the years before the focal point of its war role and image, at the anticipated fleet-to-fleet encounter at Jutland.