ABSTRACT
This article uses the diaries and private and professional correspondence of interwar gossip columnists to offer new insights into the professionalisation of popular journalism in interwar Britain. I argue that newspaper proprietors and editors “loved” the upper-class columnist, not only for the commercial success he could bring, but because his employment helped to define and stabilise the status of both the popular newspaper and the journalist in a period of rapid change. By focusing on the figure of the elite gossip columnist I argue that the upper-class gentleman influenced ideas of nationhood in the first half of the century. I also argue that new features of popular culture like the gossip column and the professionalisation of journalism, moreover, impacted on gentlemanly forms of identity. I develop these arguments in three ways: firstly, by exploring the cultural context of the gentleman-journalist, secondly, analysing the professional context in which they worked and, thirdly, by examining the gossip columnists’ “private” diaries and letters.
