Freiburg im Breisgau
Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, with a population of about 220,000. In the south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg; the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain. A famous old German university town, archiepiscopal seat, Freiburg was incorporated in the early twelfth century and developed into a major commercial and ecclesiastical center of the upper Rhine region; the city is known for its medieval minster and Renaissance university, as well as for its high standard of living and advanced environmental practices. The city is situated in the heart of the major Baden wine-growing region and serves as the primary tourist entry point to the scenic beauty of the Black Forest. According to meteorological statistics, the city is the sunniest and warmest in Germany, held the all-time German temperature record of 40.2 °C from 2003 to 2015. Freiburg was founded by Duke Berthold III of Zähringen in 1120 as a free market town.
Frei means "free", Burg, like the modern English word "borough", was used in those days for an incorporated city or town one with some degree of autonomy. The German word Burg means "a fortified town", as in Hamburg. Thus, it is that the name of this place means a "fortified town of free citizens"; this town was strategically located at a junction of trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea regions, the Rhine and Danube rivers. In 1200, Freiburg's population numbered 6,000 people. At about that time, under the rule of Bertold V, the last duke of Zähringen, the city began construction of its Freiburg Münster cathedral on the site of an older parish church. Begun in the Romanesque style, it was continued and completed 1513 for the most part as a Gothic edifice. In 1218, when Bertold V died Egino V von Urach, the count of Urach assumed the title of Freiburg's count as Egino I von Freiburg; the city council wrote down its established rights in a document. At the end of the thirteenth century there was a feud between the citizens of Freiburg and their lord, Count Egino II of Freiburg.
Egino II raised taxes and sought to limit the citizens' freedom, after which the Freiburgers used catapults to destroy the count's castle atop the Schloßberg, a hill that overlooks the city center. The furious count called on his brother-in-law the Bishop of Strasbourg, Konradius von Lichtenberg, for help; the bishop responded by marching with his army to Freiburg. According to an old Freiburg legend, a butcher named Hauri stabbed the Bishop of Strasbourg to death on 29 July 1299, it was a Pyrrhic victory, since henceforth the citizens of Freiburg had to pay an annual expiation of 300 marks in silver to the count of Freiburg until 1368. In 1366 the counts of Freiburg made another failed attempt to occupy the city during a night raid; the citizens were fed up with their lords, in 1368 Freiburg purchased its independence from them. The city turned itself over to the protection of the Habsburgs, who allowed the city to retain a large measure of freedom. Most of the nobles of the city died in the battle of Sempach.
The patrician family Schnewlin took control of the city. The guilds became more powerful than the patricians by 1389; the silver mines in Mount Schauinsland provided an important source of capital for Freiburg. This silver made Freiburg one of the richest cities in Europe, in 1327 Freiburg minted its own coin, the Rappenpfennig. In 1377 the cities of Freiburg, Basel and Breisach entered into a monetary alliance known as the Genossenschaft des Rappenpfennigs; this alliance facilitated commerce among the cities and lasted until the end of the sixteenth century. There were 8,000-9,000 people living in Freiburg between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 30 churches and monasteries. At the end of the fourteenth century the veins of silver were dwindling, by 1460 only 6,000 people still lived within Freiburg's city walls. A university city, Freiburg evolved from its focus on mining to become a cultural centre for the arts and sciences, it was a commercial center. The end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance was a time of both advances and tragedy for Freiburg.
In 1457, Albrecht VI, Regent of Further Austria, established Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, one of Germany's oldest universities. In 1498, Emperor Maximilian I held a Reichstag in Freiburg. In 1520, the city ratified a set of legal reforms considered the most progressive of the time; the aim was to find a balance between old Roman Law. The reforms were well received the sections dealing with civil process law and the city's constitution. In 1520, Freiburg decided not to take part in the Reformation and became an important centre for Catholicism on the Upper Rhine. Erasmus moved here. In 1536, a strong and persistent belief in witchcraft led to the city's first witch-hunt; the need to find a scapegoat for calamities such as the Black Plague, which claimed 2,000 area residents in 1564, led to an escalation in witch-hunting that reached its peak in 1599. A plaque on the old city wall marks the spot; the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries were turbulent times for Freiburg. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War there were 10,000-14,000 citizens in Freiburg.
Derek Jameson
Derek Jameson was an English tabloid journalist and broadcaster. Beginning his career in the media at the lowest possible level in 1944 at Reuters, he worked his way up to become the editor of several British tabloid newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s, he was a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 2 for nearly a decade and a half, including an on-air partnership with Ellen, his third wife, he became a familiar television personality. He was described, when his profile was at its highest, as "the second most famous man in Britain - after Prince Charles" by Auberon Waugh. Born in Hackney, London, to one Jewish parent, Jameson was illegitimate and grew up in a private children's home where conditions were poor, with five children sharing the same bed, bug-ridden, he never knew with certainty who his father was and discovered at 8 that his supposed elder sister, was his mother. As a child, Jameson was evacuated from London to Bishop's Stortford, during the Second World War, his formal education included a period at a borstal.
His career began in Fleet Street, as a messenger boy at Reuters, he became a trainee reporter in 1946. That year he became a member of the Communist Party, acquired the nickname of the "red menace" as a result; this political involvement ended this employment at Reuters, but his call-up for national service intervened. By the time his period in the Army ended in 1951, during which he was stationed in Vienna, he had left the Party. Jameson returned to Reuters, where he remained until 1960 becoming chief sub-editor. After a brief period as the editor of the London American, a London weekly with Arthur Christiansen as the publication's consultant, he joined the Daily Express for the first time in 1961. After working in the features department there for two years, he became a picture editor for the Sunday Mirror. From 1965 he was assistant editor of the Daily Mirror, from 1972 the northern editor based in Manchester. In 1976 he became managing editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper, introduced the paper's own photographs of topless models.
He was appointed editor of the Daily Express the following year by its new proprietor, Victor Matthews, with whom he had a good rapport. By the time Jameson left Express Newspapers in 1980, the title had increased daily sales by 500,000, a 25% increase. In 1978, in addition he became editor-in-chief of the group's new more downmarket tabloid, the Daily Star. Jameson was involved in the publicity at the time of the launch, it was aimed at the lowest end of the market below The Sun, he was quoted in one newspaper as commenting that the new paper would be "tits, bums, QPR and roll your own fags”, but while under oath several years during his libel case, he insisted that this had been invented by the reporter. The Daily Star had achieved sales of a million copies each day a year after it had begun publication. By now Jameson had gained a reputation of being able to increase the circulations of tabloid newspapers, after ending his employment by Matthews over differences which had emerged. Matthews refused to return him full-time to the Daily Express, Jameson was himself editing the Daily Star in Manchester.
He became editor of the News of the World in 1981. Rupert Murdoch, fired him in January 1984 after the publication of a story implying that Harold Holt, the Australian Prime Minister who disappeared from a beach in 1967, had been a communist spy; the Murdoch and Holt families had, in fact, known each other well. Jameson's cockney accent and abrasive persona caused Private Eye to coin the sobriquet Sid Yobbo in his honour, although Jameson himself protested at such caricatures. Despite his success and affluence, he remained sensitive about his origins. In 1980 the BBC broadcast a sketch in the Radio 4 programme Week Ending which described him as an "East End boy made bad" and that Jameson was "so ignorant he thought erudite was a type of glue". Jameson sued the BBC for libel, but lost the action when it came to court in February 1984. While the jury found the broadcast defamatory, they considered it fair comment and Jameson had to pay costs of £75,000; this award against him affected his finances, following the end of his time at the News of the World in the previous month, he was forced to take up an offer from the BBC itself.
In 1984 he presented Do They Mean Us? A television series for BBC 2 which according to his Scotsman obituary was "a decidedly patriotic examination of foreign television networks’ British coverage". On the show, Jameson had the catchphrase, they do!"He joined BBC Radio 2 in late 1985, sitting in for Jimmy Young, before taking over the breakfast show from Ken Bruce in April 1986, presenting it until December 1991 and greeting listeners with the refrain'morning, Jameson here. He hosted the Monday to Thursday late-night show between 10.30 and 12.00 along with his wife Ellen, until March 1997. In 1988 he began presenting the BBC1 television show People, he was replaced in the second series by Lucy Pilkington, Jeni Barnett and Frank Bruno. In 1989 and 1990, he presented the nightly chat show Jameson Tonight on Sky One from the Windmill Theatre in London. In 2010 he took part in BBC's The Young Ones, in which six celebrities in their 70s and 80s attempt to overcome some of the problems of ageing by harking back to the 1970s.
Following the end of his regular broadcasting career, Jameson wrote a weekly column in the Brighton Argus until October 2000, was latterly an after-dinner speaker. In 1947, Jameson married Jackie, whom he had met during his Communist Party
Little, Brown and Company
Little and Company is an American publisher founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown, for close to two centuries has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson's poetry, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations; as of 2016, Brown & Company is a division of the Hachette Book Group. Little and Company had its roots in the book selling trade, it was founded in 1837 in Boston by James Brown. They formed the partnership "for the purpose of Publishing and Selling Books." It can trace its roots before that to 1784 to a bookshop owned by Ebenezer Batelle on Marlborough Street. They published works of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and they were specialized in legal publishing and importing titles. For many years, it was the most extensive law publisher in the United States, the largest importer of standard English law and miscellaneous works, introducing American buyers to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the dictionaries of William Smith, many other standard works.
In the early years Little and Brown published the Works of Daniel Webster, George Bancroft's History of the United States, William H. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, Jones Very's first book of poetry, Letters of John Adams and works by James Russell Lowell and Francis Parkman. Little and Company was the American publisher for Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the firm was the original publisher of United States Statutes at Large beginning in 1845, under authority granted by a joint resolution of Congress. In 1874, Congress transferred the authority to publish the Statutes at Large to the Government Printing Office, responsible for producing the set since that time. 1 U. S. C. § 113 still recognizes their edition of the laws and treaties of the United States are competent evidence of the several public and private Acts of Congress and international agreements other than treaties of the United States. In 1853, Brown began publishing the works of British poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth.
Ninety-six volumes were published in the series in five years. In 1859, John Bartlett became a partner in the firm, he held the rights to his Familiar Quotations, Little, Brown published the 15th edition of the work in 1980, 125 years after its first publication. John Murray Brown, James Brown's son, took over when Augustus Flagg retired in 1884. In the 1890s, Brown expanded into general publishing, including fiction. In 1896, it published Quo Vadis. In 1898, Brown purchased a list of titles from the Roberts Brothers firm. 19th century employees included Charles Carroll Soule. John Murray Brown died in 1908 and James W. McIntyre became managing partner; when McIntyre died in 1913, Brown incorporated. In 1925, Brown entered into an agreement to publish all Atlantic Monthly books; this arrangement lasted until 1985. During this time the joint Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown imprint published All Quiet on the Western Front, Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, James Truslow Adams's The Adams Family, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty and its sequels, James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Walter D. Edmonds's Drums Along the Mohawk, William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
Salinger terminated his contract with the publishing house sometime in the 1970s, though his novel was still published by Little, Brown. Other prominent figures published by Little, Brown in the 20th and early 21st centuries have included Nagaru Tanigawa, Donald Barthelme, Louisa M. Alcott, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Bernie Brillstein, Thornton Burgess, Hortense Calisher, Bruce Catton, A. J. Cronin, Peter De Vries, J. Frank Dobie, C. S. Forester, John Fowles, Malcolm Gladwell, Pete Hamill, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Lillian Hellman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Henry Kissinger, Elizabeth Kostova, Norman Mailer, William Manchester, Nelson Mandela, John P. Marquand and Johnson, Stephenie Meyer, Rick Moody, Ogden Nash, Edwin O'Connor, Erich Maria Remarque, Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, George Stephanopoulos, Gwyn Thomas, Gore Vidal, David Foster Wallace, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, James Patterson and Herman Wouk. Little, Brown published the photography of Ansel Adams; the imprint was purchased by Time Inc. in 1968, was made part of the Time Warner Book Group when Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time Warner in 1989.
All editing staff moved from Boston to Time Warner Book Group offices in New York City by 2001. In 1996, Brown's legal and medical publishing division was purchased by Wolters Kluwer. In 2001, Michael Pietsch became Publisher of Brown. Little, Brown expanded into the UK in 1992 when TWBG bought MacDonald & Co from Maxwell Communications, taking on its Abacus and Orbit lists, authors including Iain Banks. Feminist publisher Virago Press followed in 1996. In 1996, Wolters Kluwer acquired Little, Brown's professional division and incorporated it into its Aspen and Lippincott-Raven imprints. In 2006, the Time Warner Book Group was sold to French publisher Hachette Livre. Following this, the Little, Brown imprint is used by Hachette Livre's U. S. publishing company, Hachette Book Group USA. In 2011, Brown launched an imprint devoted to suspense publishing: Mulholland Books. In 2018, Brown launched an imprint devoted to health, lifestyle and science: Little, Brown Spark; the company received the Publisher of the Year Award three times.
On April 1, 2013, Reagan Arthur became publisher of Brown. Badminton Library Books in the United States List
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom, described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The party's platform emphasises greater state intervention, social justice and strengthening workers' rights; the Labour Party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940-1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfare state from 1945 to 1951. Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Labour again governed from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1979. In the 1990s Tony Blair took Labour closer to the centre as part of his "New Labour" project, which governed the UK under Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010.
After Corbyn took over in 2015, the party has moved leftward. Labour is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, having won the second-largest number of seats in the 2017 general election; the Labour Party is the largest party in the Welsh Assembly, forming the main party in the current Welsh government. The party is the third largest in the Scottish Parliament. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, holds observer status in the Socialist International, sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament; the party includes semi-autonomous Scottish and Welsh branches and supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland. As of 2017, Labour had the largest membership of any party in Western Europe; the Labour Party originated in the late 19th century, meeting the demand for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban working class, a demographic which had increased in number, many of whom only gained suffrage with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1884.
Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. The first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. At the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardie's roots as a lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party which led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that "Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx".
In 1899, a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all left-wing organisations and form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates; the motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, the proposed conference was held at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street on 26 and 27 February 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations—trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates. After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, meant to co-ordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population.
It had no single leader, in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united; the October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored. Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike; the judgement made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative Government of Arthur Balfour to industrial and business interests intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared to have little concern for the industrial proletariat and its problems. In the 1906 election, the LRC won 29 seats—helped by a secret 1903 pact between Ramsay MacDonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone that aimed to avoid splitting the opposition vote between Labour and Liberal candidates in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office.
In their first meeting after the election the group's Members of Parliament decided to adop
Bessie Braddock
Elizabeth Margaret Braddock was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970. She was a member of Liverpool County Borough Council from 1930 to 1961. Although she never held office in government, she won a national reputation for her forthright campaigns in connection with housing, public health and other social issues. Braddock inherited much of her campaigning spirit from her mother, Mary Bamber, an early socialist and trade union activist. After some years in the Independent Labour Party, Braddock joined the Communist Party of Great Britain on its foundation in 1920, but became disillusioned with the party's dictatorial tendencies, she left the CPGB in 1924 and joined the Labour Party. Before the Second World War, alongside her husband Jack Braddock she established a reputation as a crusading left-wing councillor at odds with her party while pursuing an agenda of social reform. During the war she worked in Liverpool's ambulance service, before winning the Exchange division for Labour in the 1945 general election.
With her formidable physique and outspoken manner, Braddock was a pugnacious presence in parliament, a keen supporter of the 1945–51 Attlee ministry's reform agenda the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. She served on Labour's National Executive Committee between 1947 and 1969, her combative style led to a brief suspension from parliament in 1952. For most of her parliamentary career she remained a member of Liverpool's council, was a central figure in the controversy that arose in the 1950s over the city's decision to acquire and flood the Tryweryn Valley in Wales for the construction of a reservoir. Between 1953 and 1957 Braddock served on the Royal Commission for Mental Health which led to the Mental Health Act 1959. From the early 1950s she moved to the right wing of her party, was acerbic in her judgements of her former colleagues on the left; when Labour won the 1964 general election she refused office on the grounds of health. Towards the end of her life she became Liverpool's first woman freeman.
After her death in 1970 her Guardian obituarist hailed her as "one of the most distinctive political personalities of the century". Elizabeth Bamber was born on 24 September 1899 at 23 Zante Street, in the Everton area of Liverpool, the eldest daughter of Hugh Bamber, a bookbinder, his wife Mary, née Little. Mary had come to Liverpool as a child when her father, a well-to-do Edinburgh lawyer, abandoned his family after his descent into alcoholism and poverty. Liverpool in the late 19th century suffered extremes of deprivation, had the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Mary became a trade union organiser and campaigner against deplorable social conditions, established a reputation as an outstanding platform speaker, she was the dominant early influence on her daughter Elizabeth, who formed a lifelong determination to represent and fight for the disadvantaged. In 1902 the Bamber family relocated to Smollett Street in nearby Bootle, one of several moves that caused Elizabeth's formal education to be divided among different schools.
Alongside her normal schooling, her political education began at the Marmaduke Street Socialist Sunday School, through the medium of her mother's campaigning activities. One of Elizabeth's early memories was of the soup kitchen for the destitute which Mary helped to run on St George's Plateau: "I remember the faces of the unemployed when the soup ran out... I remember blank, hopeless stares, day after day, week after week, all through the hard winter of 1906–07". At the age of eleven Elizabeth left the Sunday School and joined the youth section of the Independent Labour Party, where she studied socialism alongside a busy programme of social activities, she described herself at this time as "strong, fond of walking and eating". By this time Mary Bamber was working as an organiser for the Warehouse Workers' Union. Mother and daughter were both present at St George's Plateau on 13 August 1911, when a baton charge by police and troops broke up a rally in support of Liverpool's striking transport workers.
Hundreds were injured, in the disturbances that followed, two demonstrators were shot dead. The day became enshrined in Liverpool's working-class history as "Bloody Sunday". Elizabeth left school in 1913, began work filling seed packets for five shillings a week; the job was too monotonous to engage her for long, after a few months she found a post in the drapery department of the Walton Road Co-operative store. At her mother's insistence she became a member of the Shopworkers' Union. Meanwhile, she attended classes run by the Workers' Educational Association and the Plebs' League: "They told me how the capitalists controlled money and the land, and... hung on to them". Within the group of young socialists who gathered at the ILP's local headquarters, there were three Elizabeths. To avoid confusion, lots were drawn to decide who should be known as Elizabeth, Betty, or Bessie. By this means Elizabeth Bamber took the name Bessie. Among the other ILP activists at Kensington was Sydney Silverman, four years older than Bessie, the son of a poor draper.
Silverman was a considerable influence on the youthful Bessie. When the First World War began in August 1914, the ILP opposed it as "an appalling crime upon the nations", "stamp
Time (magazine)
Time is an American weekly news magazine and news website published in New York City. It was founded in 1923 and run by Henry Luce. A European edition is published in London and covers the Middle East, and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong; the South Pacific edition, which covers Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, is based in Sydney. In December 2008, Time discontinued publishing a Canadian advertiser edition. Time has the world's largest circulation for a weekly news magazine; the print edition has a readership of 26 million. In mid-2012, its circulation was over three million, which had lowered to two million by late 2017. Richard Stengel was the managing editor from May 2006 to October 2013, when he joined the U. S. State Department. Nancy Gibbs was the managing editor from September 2013 until September 2017, she was succeeded by Edward Felsenthal, Time's digital editor. Time magazine was created in 1923 by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, making it the first weekly news magazine in the United States.
The two had worked together as chairman and managing editor of the Yale Daily News. They first called the proposed magazine Facts, they wanted to emphasize brevity. They changed the name to Time and used the slogan "Take Time–It's Brief". Hadden was liked to tease Luce, he saw Time as important, but fun, which accounted for its heavy coverage of celebrities, the entertainment industry, pop culture—criticized as too light for serious news. It set out to tell the news through people, for many decades, the magazine's cover depicted a single person. More Time has incorporated "People of the Year" issues which grew in popularity over the years. Notable mentions of them were Steve Jobs, etc.. The first issue of Time was published on March 3, 1923, featuring Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the House of Representatives, on its cover. 1, including all of the articles and advertisements contained in the original, was included with copies of the February 28, 1938 issue as a commemoration of the magazine's 15th anniversary.
The cover price was 15¢ On Hadden's death in 1929, Luce became the dominant man at Time and a major figure in the history of 20th-century media. According to Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1972–2004 by Robert Elson, "Roy Edward Larsen was to play a role second only to Luce's in the development of Time Inc". In his book, The March of Time, 1935–1951, Raymond Fielding noted that Larsen was "originally circulation manager and general manager of Time publisher of Life, for many years president of Time Inc. and in the long history of the corporation the most influential and important figure after Luce". Around the time they were raising $100,000 from wealthy Yale alumni such as Henry P. Davison, partner of J. P. Morgan & Co. publicity man Martin Egan and J. P. Morgan & Co. banker Dwight Morrow, Henry Luce, Briton Hadden hired Larsen in 1922 – although Larsen was a Harvard graduate and Luce and Hadden were Yale graduates. After Hadden died in 1929, Larsen purchased 550 shares of Time Inc. using money he obtained from selling RKO stock which he had inherited from his father, the head of the Benjamin Franklin Keith theatre chain in New England.
However, after Briton Hadden's death, the largest Time, Inc. stockholder was Henry Luce, who ruled the media conglomerate in an autocratic fashion, "at his right hand was Larsen", Time's second-largest stockholder, according to Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise 1923–1941. In 1929, Roy Larsen was named a Time Inc. director and vice president. J. P. Morgan retained a certain control through two directorates and a share of stocks, both over Time and Fortune. Other shareholders were the New York Trust Company; the Time Inc. stock owned by Luce at the time of his death was worth about $109 million, it had been yielding him a yearly dividend of more than $2.4 million, according to Curtis Prendergast's The World of Time Inc.: The Intimate History of a Changing Enterprise 1957–1983. The Larsen family's Time stock was worth around $80 million during the 1960s, Roy Larsen was both a Time Inc. director and the chairman of its executive committee serving as Time's vice chairman of the board until the middle of 1979.
According to the September 10, 1979, issue of The New York Times, "Mr. Larsen was the only employee in the company's history given an exemption from its policy of mandatory retirement at age 65." After Time magazine began publishing its weekly issues in March 1923, Roy Larsen was able to increase its circulation by using U. S. radio and movie theaters around the world. It promoted both Time magazine and U. S. political and corporate interests. According to The March of Time, as early as 1924, Larsen had brought Time into the infant radio business with the broadcast of a 15-minute sustaining quiz show entitled Pop Question which survived until 1925". In 1928, Larsen "undertook the weekly broadcast of a 10-minute programme series of brief news summaries, drawn from current issues of Time magazine, broadcast over 33 stations throughout the United States". Larsen next arranged for a 30-minute radio program, The March of Time, to be broadcast over CBS, beginning on March 6, 1931; each week, the program presented a dramatisation of the week's news for its listeners, thus Time magazine itself was brought "to the attention of millions unaware
