Was the Daily Mail’s star reporter a dupe, a cynic or a Nazi sympathiser?
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Author Richard Evans | Price £22 | Released 28 August 2025 | Reviewer John Beales
Tall, well-educated and distinctive-looking, for much of the first half of the 20th century, George Ward Price was the world’s best-known journalist – the writer Ernest Hemingway described him as “the monocled prince of the press.” For many he was not just a reporter for the Daily Mail, he was the Daily Mail. If there was an exclusive to be had anywhere in the world, Ward Price was the man on the spot to report it.
He wasn’t afraid to put himself in harm’s way, reporting on the First Balkan War, surviving the crash of a German airship, taking part in an Italian bombing raid against Austrian forces, and leaving on the last boat from Gallipoli at the end of the Dardanelles Campaign in the First World War. This was the man who was there “whenever history was in the making.”
But his fame turned to notoriety because of his unparalleled access to the right-wing dictators of the 1930s, and his uncritical reporting saw him later labelled a Nazi and fascist apologist at best, and a sympathiser at worst.
Interviewing Hitler charts how Ward Price fostered relationships with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi leadership to maintain access, not just report a single ‘scoop’, as the world careered towards another conflict. Author Richard Evans exposes the lie of Ward Price’s post-war claims to have reported impartially, and presents us with damning evidence of his political sympathies. This book is a timely reminder of the danger of journalists prioritising access to those in power over holding them to account.
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