Freemasonry and the Press in the Twentieth Century

A National Newspaper Study of England and Wales

by Paul Calderwood

About the Author

Paul Calderwood graduated in History from the University of Leicester and subsequently spent his working life in journalism and public relations.

More recently, his work has been featured in The Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, the leading academic journal in this field.

For his paper on Freemasonry and Architecture in Twentieth-century Britain, he was awarded the Norman B Spencer Prize by Quatuor Coronati Lodge, the premier lodge of Masonic research, in 2010, and, in the following year, he received the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Goldsmiths, University of London for his thesis on the history of Freemasonry and the Press in Twentieth-century Britain.

About the Book

By the end of the twentieth century, Freemasonry had acquired an unsavoury reputation as a secretive network of wealthy men looking out for each others’ interests.

The popular view is of an organisation that, if not actually corrupt, is certainly viewed with deep mistrust by the press and wider society.

Yet, as this book makes clear, this view contrasts sharply with the situation at the beginning of the century when the public’s perception of Freemasonry in Britain was much more benevolent, with numerous establishment figures (including monarchs, government ministers, archbishops and civic worthies) enthusiastically recommending Freemasonry as the key to model citizenship.

Focusing particularly on the role of the press, this book investigates the transformation of the image of Freemasonry in Britain from respectability to suspicion.

It describes how the media projected a positive message of the organisation for almost forty years, based on a mass of news emanating from the organisation itself, before a change in public regard occurred during the later twentieth-century.

This change in the public mood, the book argues, was due primarily to Masonic withdrawal from the public sphere and a disengagement with the press.

Through an examination of the subject of Freemasonry and the British press, a number of related social trends are addressed, including the decline of deference, the erosion of privacy, greater competition in the media, the emergence of more aggressive and investigative journalism, the consequences of media isolation and the rise of professional Public Relations.

The book also illuminates the organisation’s collisions with nationalism, communism, and state welfare provision. As such, the study is illuminating not only for students of Freemasonry, but those with an interest in the wider social history of modern Britain.

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