BEAUTIFUL actress Phyllis Monkman was one of the pin-ups of the 1900s. A star of stage and silent screen who charmed the public, royalty and soldiers across the British Empire.

She had no shortage of suitors among the rich and famous and was the perfect woman to draw in readers for Britain’s national press. But was she really desperate to find a husband?

In 1916, the readers of Pearson’s Weekly, the magazine started by Express founder Arthur Pearson, believed so. They responded in droves to her search to find Mr Right in her column which was popular among soldiers on the front line of The Somme in the First World War. Under the headline: Who will marry Phyllis Monkton? the prize was a series of dates with the star who was looking for her ideal man.

Applicants had to fill in a form describing themselves. Then the actress would pick 50 men to correspond with, of whom six would be chosen for a personal introduction. From the six, Phyllis would select the lucky man.

But trouble was brewing. This was the time when the Express and Pearson’s Weekly were selling lonely soldier ads like Cadbury’s cakes. The Express had already run a story about Private A.C White of the 1st Rifle Brigade with the headline: ‘The loneliest man at the front!’

They told how he was in search of female pen pals to brighten up his existence and the response was enormous: He received 470 letters in two days.

Brave lads of the Somme searched for love

Other newspapers jumped on the bandwagon and fuelled a boom in lonely soldier letters. It worked both ways and soon the troops were advertising in the Express for women as pen pals or wives.

But when the War Office realised that hundreds of thousands of letters were being exchanged between complete strangers and military personnel, it was seen as a threat to national security, let alone stretching the resources of the Army postal system. It was playing into the hands of the enemy.

The Government ended the sexy actress’s competition before she was able to find her ideal man to take to dinner and four papers, including the Daily Express, were warned off publishing lonely soldier ads.

They came back again, of course, After all, Lonely Hearts ads had been around a long time and so had the men and women who needed them.

As for Phyllis there were rumours that she went on to sleep with Bertie, later to become King George VI following Edward’s abdication, when he was a young prince. They were often seen entering a private room to dine at the Half Moon Restaurant in Mayfair. And Cecil Beaton always believed it was Phyliss who had been chosen by certain people at the Palace to initiate the shy prince into ‘the joys of of sex’.

Here’s a couple of Lonely Hearts ads from the past:

 

SEEKING SWEET BREATH AND FULL BOSOM

From the Sheffield Independent on February, 12,1866…

“Does anyone know of a lady that fits the following description?

“A woman, tall and graceful in her person, more of the fine woman than a pretty one, good teeth, soft lips, sweet breath, with eyes no matter what colour but expressive, of a healthy complexion, rather inclined to fair than brown, neat in her person, her bosom full, plump, firm, and white.

“A good understanding without being a wit, but cheerful and lively in conversation, polite and delicate of speech, her temper humane and tender, and to look as if she could feel delight where she wishes to give it.

“If such a one there be, there is a gentleman of £2000 a year, 52 years of age next July, but of a vigorous, strong, and amorous constitution, that will marry her, be her fortune ever so small.” A.B.

 

COME AND BE MY PIG LADY

And an amusing Lonely Hearts advert for a man seeking a woman to look after his pigs and more in the Dorset County Chronicle on August 23, 1832. How tempting for her, eh? It was from Charles Warren of Marnhall, Dorset and read:

“My family is as follows: the eldest boy is 13 years old – the younger is boy 5 years old – and a girl 8 years old. My house is my own, and I have no rent to pay.

“I have an acre of potatoes, half blues and half whites, this year. My wife has been dead 13 months or so. The children live by themselves in the daytime, but I am always at home with them at night.

“It would be better if there was a woman to look after them, both for the children and myself. I get eight shillings a week for my work, and the boy two shillings a week, and have constant employ.

“I want a good and steady woman between 30 and 40 years old, for a wife. I do not want a second family. I really want a woman to look after the pigs while I am out at work and come home to.”

(Does he mean the pigs or the children, I wonder?)

 

REPORTER HOPPING MAD OVER A RABBIT

Rene MacColl was Chief Foreign Correspondent of the Express for 24 years and worked in Washington, Paris and London. But he had a reputation for being a bit of a prima donna and sometimes editors apparently found him hard to handle.

He was worth his weight in gold, bringing in interviews with Cold War leaders such as Tito and being invited to accompany leader of the Labour Party Clement Attlee to China in 1954.

Trouble was that by all accounts he was stubborn and when he got a bee in his bonnet about something he would relentlessly pursue it, especially what stories he wanted to do or how they were written.

But one day it wasn’t a bee in his bonnet, it was a bunny. And he was off sub-editors. He wrote an angry airmail letter to the editor from the American Middle West where he was on a job, saying: “I protest with all the force at my command against the changing of the word rabbit into bunny in my copy. I am used to the stupidity of sub-editors, but this is so intolerable that I am in despair.”

The editor was Arthur Christiansen at the time who felt he had to hold an inquest as his travelling star hack had a habit of resigning.

The nervous sub explained that MacColl had used the word rabbit three times in one sentence and the word bunny seemed to him to be a warm, human alternative when he used it again in the next paragraph. Fair dos.

When MacColl returned to London, Christiansen took him to a long lunch, and they never mentioned it. By the time he flew back he appeared to have forgotten all about it. MacColl died in 1971, aged 66.

Christiansen once said that MacColl was one of the paper’s crown jewels. Keeping prima donnas like him happy was one of the most wearing and yet exciting part of an editor’s business. “The more successful the paper, the more prima donnas he will gather around him,” he added.

 

SONG THAT HAD CHURCHILL IN TEARS

Churchill painting on the Riviera

JUST read a wonderful piece about Beaverbrook and his great friend Winston Churchill, which gives an insight into the private lives of these two giants of our past.

In 1949, when peace in Europe reigned at last, Churchill suffered his first stroke. Beaverbrook and his companion Brigadier Michael Wardle invited the wartime leader away to the newspaper magnate’s villa, La Capponcina at Cap d’Ail, across the bay from Monte Carlo, to recuperate.

It was raining heavily on the French Riviera one afternoon and the three of them were sitting in the drawing room playing a selection of records picked at random by Beaverbrook.

There were the latest popular French songs of the moment with a new rendering of Old Folks at Home, Grieg’s Homage March, pieces from Cavalleria Rusticana, and finally the Miserere from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. 

“Let’s have some more, Max,” said Churchill when the music finished.

“What sort do you want, popular or classical?” asked Beaverbrook.

“Some beautiful music like the last,” Churchill replied.

Wardle who later wrote about the holiday, said Beaverbrook rummaged, and put on Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. “This will be played in 15 years’ time when they carry you through the streets of London,” he said to Churchill.

The wartime leader was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t much care what they do to me when I’m dead,” he replied. “I’ve always thought I would rather like to be carried in a farm wagon.”

“Nothing of the sort,” replied Beaverbrook. ‘You’ll be buried with all the pomp and circumstance that is your due. The people will insist on it. And rightly. But you might as well listen to the music while you’re alive. It’s one of the greatest things ever written.”

Churchill listened to the triumphant tones of Land of Hope and Glory. His eyes glistened and a tear fell as his face became heavy with emotion. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “to have lived to see England brought down to ruin and the Empire lost — Egypt, Burma, India — I’ve always said I could defend India against the world, all except the English.”

He was referring to the socialists at home of course, because in 1947 Clement Attlee’s Labour government gave India independence. Churchill was leader of the Conservative Party at the time.

“For the first time in my life I hate the other side,” he said. “They are mean and wicked, wallowing in their filthy slime! Damn them!

“And what folly to slag off the Americans. After all, if I were an American, and had to listen to the abuse from the socialists, I think I might be tempted to say that America had no more money to spend on Europe and England!” (How true that turned out to be now Trump has come along.)

The room, Wardle said, had a great stone fireplace at the far end over which the arms of some long-forgotten nobleman were carved, together with the motto “Ne derelictas me Domine”, “Do not forsake me, O Lord.”

The words appealed to Lord Beaverbrook, the son of a Presbyterian Minister, who acquired them with the fireplace when he bought the house in 1939.

Churchill had gone to La Capponcina for a health holiday, arriving by air in Nice with a great retinue of secretaries, servants and detectives, French and English.

He had been at Strasbourg, laying the foundations of federations of the Council of Europe, where he received a warm welcome.

He’d made a speech launching the idea of the idea of a European federation in words that only he could say.

“If Europe were united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, prosperity and glory which its 400 million people could enjoy.

“Yet it is from Europe that has sprung that series of frightful nationalistic quarrels, originated by the Teutonic nations in their rise to power, which we have seen in this twentieth century and in our own lifetime wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.”

 

FUNERAL NOTE: Despite Beaverbrook’s prophecy Land of Hope and Glory was not played at Churchill’s funeral procession through the streets of London. The Dead March from Saul by Handel, was played for the cortege as it left Westminster Hall for St Paul’s Cathedral, accompanied by the Band of the Irish Guards.

 

TERRY MANNERS

 

3 March 2025