Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsYoung Women Learning Journalism at London University, 1919-1939after only one year, in 1920 the first recipients of the Diploma were two innumber, one woman and one man. Subsequently, in later years, morewomen than men gained the award, especially after the State funding forex-Servicemen ended in the mid-1920s. (See Table III page 135)However, in its last year, 1939, 12 men and 10 women received theDiploma. But many hundreds more actually studied for the award, perhapsup to 1,600, throughout its 20-year existence, though many left after onlyone year. When local education authorities began awarding scholarshipsfor university degrees, diplomas were not usually eligible and,subsequently, if they were awarded, some students had to repay themduring their working life. One implication was that most students must havecome from families that could afford the fees, I have found no evidence tosuggest any women received exhibitions provided by provincialnewspapers, and, indeed, by 1939 many applicants were the sons anddaughters of journalists and editors.The view of women students on the Diploma for Journalism courseMargery Vera Hunter Woods (later Green), born in 1904, attendedUniversity College from 1921-23 gaining her Diploma for Journalism aged19. She recalled that Td always wanted to write from the very earliest days.I went to Cheltenham Ladies College, and got stuff published in the schoolmagazine - bad poetry of the sort you write when you are sixteen. Becauseof my lack of Matriculation [basically, no Latin] University College, London,said my only way into university would be through the journalism course. ’21In those early years no practical journalism was taught, although Greenachieved distinction in English Composition, General History andDevelopment of Science and English Literature and Criticism. Greencomplained that there was ’no real student centre where we couldassemble and discuss. It was all fragmentary. My Diploma equipping mewith much that was academic and impractical’ and, consequently, it is nosurprise that she declared that her Diploma ’failed to arouse the slightestflicker of interest in anyone I approached for a job.’ But she had a summerattachment at the Southampton Daily News ’doing dogsbody work: going toplaces like Cowes and reporting on the regatta there, or going to interviewpeople who’d had their names in the newspapers. There were two placardsin the newsroom, one which stated "When in doubt, leave it out" while theother boasted "publish and be damned. ’’22Green’s memoirs tell us that she wished she had kept her maiden name,as did fellow-students Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) and Stella Gibbons(1902-1990). When I interviewed her in 1991 Green had written as MargeryHunter Woods, Vera Hunter, and Margery Cornish (her first husband’sname). Talking about the course Green remembered that ’Stella Gibbonswas on it with me, and Elizabeth Bowen, who is now dead, but who wrotesome very good novels, and they left before the end of the course andstarted writing novels. I think I must have read the first novel Bowen everwrote because she asked me to go to her house to read it over and I did. ’23However, we all know that memory can play cruel tricks and Gibbons didgraduate, in 1922, and while Bowen did leave early, without the Diploma,2O8MOD100051379