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Introduction In the interwar years, Fleet Street was not merely a center of industry; it was a rival court to Westminster. The “Fourth Estate,” previously a fragmented collection of partisan journals and stately broadsheets, had coalesced into a high-volume, industrial machine dominated by a handful of men. Chief among these were Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, and Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere. These “Press Barons” were a new phenomenon in British public life. They were not content to merely report the news or even to influence opinion from the sidelines. They sought to dictate policy, break governments, and install their own candidates…