Valentine WilliamsGeorge Valentine Williams was a reporter and popular fiction author who lived from 1883 to 1946. In 1883, Williams was born. He was the oldest son of Reuters's top editor. His brother and an uncle were also reporters. In 1905, when he was 21, he tookover for Austin Harrison as the Reuters reporter in Berlin. He quit Reuters in 1908 to work for the Daily Mail, where he wrote stories from Paris and reported on the 1910 Portuguese revolution. At the start of World War, I, he was in the Balkans. In March 1915, he became one of the first official war reporters. Before they were officially allowed to, William Beach Thomas had been writing about the war for the Daily Mail. Williams took over when the British government gave up its opposition to reporters' presence in 1915. Roosevelt had warned the British government that restrictions on reporting were hurting public opinion in the US, so the British government gave up its resistance. Williams joined the Irish Guards in December 1915, and Beach Thomas filled in for him as a proper reporter in France. Williams was a fighter and won the Military Cross. He also wrote two autobiographies about his time in the war. Read More Read Less