A Lilliput Magazine Anthology, edited by Chris Harte

Chris Harte was responsible for a history and bibliography of Lilliput, the famous pocket magazine that ran from 1937 to 1960. He has now edited two anthologies collecting some of the best stories and writing from the magazine.

The first volume covers the first ten years, 1937 to 1946 and includes work from an incredible range of authors, from Ernest Hemingway to George Bernard Shaw. There's an informative introduction about the how Lilliput came to exist and the background of its creator and first editor, Stefan Lorant. How it was put together by Lorant with the aid of Alison Blair and photographer Zoltan Glass is itself a fascinating story, expanded upon in Harte's History and Bibliography, which is still available.

The stories include some relatively well-known pieces, like Karol Capek's 'The Fortune-Teller', first published in 1929 about a woman who is taken to court after giving a card reading to a policeman's wife, but for the most part the stories are obscure and little known.

Some of the bigger names include journalist and novelist John Brophy, MP and campaigner George Lansbury, literary critic V. S. Pritchett, crime and science fiction novelist Margot Bennett and Hornblower-creator C. S. Forester. Forty-nine short pieces in all.

Volume two contains seventy-one pieces and is almost 100 pages longer, filled with the same mix of stories and features by names you'll know and others that are now obscured by time. Claud Cockburn, Bill Naughton, Hector Bolitho, Patrick Campbell, Paul Tabori, Richard Gordon, Eric Ambler and Dennis Bardens (probably the only Lilliput author I have a letter from). Maurice Richardson, who debuted in the earlier volume with one feature, here has fourteen, including the story of the Rev. Harold Davidson, nicknamed the prostitutes padre, who died in the jaws of a lion in 1937. Richardson had an important part to play in slowing the magazine's decline, a reliable hand while editors came and went during the 1950s.

These two volumes are a fascinating trip into history, charting the changing attitudes of a period that covered war, austerity, affluence and the emergence of terms ranging from "crumpet" to "the establishment". Social history aside, they are also great books to have on your bedside table as you can dip in whenever sleep eludes you.

Lilliput Magazine: A History and Bibliography by Chris Harte. Sports History Publishing ISBN 978-189801018-0, 3 June 2024, 362pp, £29.95. Available via Amazon.
A Lilliput Magazine Anthology by Chris Harte. Sports History Publishing ISBN 978-189801019-7, November 1924, 164pp, £14.95. Available via Amazon.
A Second Lilliput Magazine Anthology by Chris Harte. Sports History Publishing ISBN 978-189801021-0, April 2025, 258pp, £14.95. Available via Amazon.