14 Facts About Basil Clarke

Sir Thomas Basil Clarke was an English war correspondent during the First World War and is regarded as the UK's first public relations professional.

Basil Clarke then worked for six months as a "volunteer sub-editor" for the Manchester Courier before joining the Manchester Guardian as a sub-editor.

Basil Clarke lived there as a fugitive because of a ban on war reporters at the front during the early part of the war and was the first reporter to get into Ypres following the German destruction of it in November 1914.

Basil Clarke was forced to return to England in January 1915, the Daily Mail sent him on a tour of neutral countries to try to uncover their intentions.

Basil Clarke returned home to spend the rest of 1915 reporting on the impact of the war at home, including an article about the role of women in munitions factories, before causing a global scandal in January 1916 by accusing the Government of failing to enforce the blockade of Germany.

Basil Clarke then reported on the Easter Rising - he was the first English journalist to get independent reports out of Dublin - before leaving the Daily Mail after an argument with its news editor, Walter G Fish.

Basil Clarke spent the last few months of 1916 as an accredited reporter at the Battle of the Somme, before publishing a memoir of his war experiences, which he called My Round of the War, at the start of 1918.

The official newspaper of the government of the Irish Republic, the Irish Bulletin, accused Basil Clarke of inventing stories and more recently historians have accused him of putting out false information to discredit Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Also in Ireland, Basil Clarke pioneered an approach to public relations he called "propaganda by news", the practice of influencing the news agenda through the selection of which news to release.

Basil Clarke married Alice in 1904 and they had seven children together.

Basil Clarke was a member of various clubs and societies, including President of the Manchester Press Club and he was awarded the Order of the Dannebrog for his membership of the Anglo-Danish Society.

Basil Clarke had various business investments, including Whitehall Films, but these investments were invariably failures.

Basil Clarke's job teaching English in Germany in 1903 ended following a fight with his employer, while in 1930 he was involved in two high-profile court cases after violent incidents.

Basil Clarke had a stroke in 1935 and spent the rest of his life in ill-health.