The Great War K.B.E. group of seven awarded to Sir Percival Phillips, who was Senior War Correspondent on the Western Front and probably the best known special correspondent writing for the British Press in the first half of the 20th century

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, K.B.E. (Civil) Knight Commander’s 1st type set of insignia, comprising neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel, and breast star, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; 1914-15 Star (P. Phillips); British War and Victory Medals (P. Phillips); Delhi Durbar 1911; French Legion of Honour, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver, gilt and enamel, mounted court-style as worn where applicable, good very fine or better (7) £2000-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Ron Penhall Collection.

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He was subsequently one of the first five accredited correspondents with the British Armies on the Western Front in May 1915, and he served in this capacity representing the Daily Express, the Morning Post and the Daily Graphic, until the Armistice in 1918. In the interim, he was present in Dublin in 1916 as an accredited correspondent of the War Office during the troubles of that year and he also accompanied the British Army into Germany, where he was attached to the Army of the Rhine until the conclusion of the peace in 1919.

He was duly appointed a K.B.E. (Civil Division) ‘for services in connection with the War’, on 30 March 1920, the London Gazette of that date describing him as ‘Senior War Correspondent on the Western Front’; and was also granted permission, on 14 October 1921, to wear the Cross of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour conferred by the President of France ‘in recognition of valuable services rendered during the War.’

After the Great War, Phillips accompanied the Prince of Wales on his Canadian tour in 1919, was in Egypt, Syria and Turkey in 1919-20, during the Arab rising, and in Constantinople until the signing of peace with Turkey. He was next employed in Greece in 1920-21, and again accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour to India and the Far East in 1921-22.

Phillips left the Daily Express in 1922, and then became a special correspondent for the Daily Mail until 1934 - in the former year he investigated the British administration in Mesopotamia, and the fascist movement in Italy. He was with the French Army in the Ruhr in 1923-24, and was a delegate to the Imperial Press Conference at Melbourne in 1925. In 1925-26 he witnessed the communist rising in China, and in 1926 accompanied the Daily Mail Trade Union Mission to the U.S.A.

Phillips was in China again in 1926-27 during the revolution there, and in 1927 he investigated the Bolshevik movement in Java. He accompanied the King and Queen of Afghanistan from India to Europe in 1928, and in the same year investigated the suppression of the Mafia in Sicily. He accompanied the Prince of Wales to East Africa in 1928, visited Turkey and Asia Minor in 1929, and afterwards went to Spain, and later in the same year was in Manchuria during the Sino-Russian railway dispute.

Sir Percival went from Cape Town to Cairo in 1930 during the second visit of the Prince of Wales to South and East Africa, and was present at the coronation of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia in November of that year. He was present at the inauguration of New Delhi in 1931, and spent 16 months in India during 1931-32. He was in Mesopotamia and Southern Persia in 1932, and made an extensive tour of the U.S.A. in 1933. In 1933-34 he was in India, Siam and the Far East.

In 1934 Phillips left the Daily Mail, and then became a special correspondent for the Daily Telegraph with which newspaper he remained until his death in 1937. He was in Greece in 1935 during the revolution there, and in Abyssinia, and British and French Somaliland in 1935-36. He was ‘special correspondent at Addis Ababa, and elsewhere, during the greater part of the Abyssinian war, and his despatches were generally recognized as containing the most authoritative information on its progress’. He aroused the attention of the whole world when he gave the first detailed account of the famous agreement between the Emperor of Abyssinia and Mr F. W. Rickett, representing the African Exploitation and Development Corporation, a contract which caused widespread international repercussions. Finally, in 1935 he visited Spain during the crises and civil war there, and afterwards was in the U.S.A. and Canada.

He gave daily dispatches from the Queen Mary during her maiden voyage, he reported on two Presidential Conventions in the United States, and on the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Jubilee at Vancouver. Phillips was the author of many short stories and magazine articles, and also of Far Vistas, published by Methuen in 1933. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Sir Percival Phillips died in a London nursing home on 29 January 1937, aged 59 years. He had been taken ill in Tangier and returned to England in the P. & O. liner Ranchi. When the ship arrived at Tilbury, he was transferred to a waiting ambulance and taken to the nursing home where he died of acute nephritis:

‘Courteous and of simple dignity, he allied great personal charm with outstanding ability. Accurate, balanced and painstaking, yet never pedestrian, Sir Percival Phillips’s work was essentially a reflection of the man himself. The nature of his profession meant he was never in Fleet Street for a very long time, but those of his colleagues who knew him recognised in him an exceptionally fine analytical intelligence, a courage and resource completely devoid of egoism, and a friendliness and courtesy which made him not only a good talker but a ready listener’ (his newspaper’s obituary refers).

In 2000, Sir Percival’s papers relating to his reporting on the Western Front 1914-16 were acquired by the Imperial War Museum; sold with copies of Sir Percival’s books, Far Vistas and The Red Dragon & The Black Shirts.

Provenance: Dix Noonan Webb, 19 September 2003 (John Tamplin Collection - Lot 73).