- Stephen Tallents
Sir Stephen George Tallents (
20 October 1884 ,London -11 September 1958 ,London ) was a British civil servant and public relations expert.Educated at Harrow and Balliol, he served as an officer in the
Irish Guards inWorld War I until severely wounded at Festubert. He then worked at theMinistry of Munitions , transferring in 1916 to theMinistry of Food . In 1918 he became chief delegate for the Supply of Relief to Poland and in 1919 was made British Commissioner for the Baltic Provinces. In 1919 he was appointed British Commissioner for the Baltic provinces and helped draw up the treaty that establishedEstonia ,Latvia andLithuania . He was secretary to the lastLord-Lieutenant of Ireland , Lord FitzAlan. He is best known for his work as the secretary of theEmpire Marketing Board (EMB) between 1926 and 1933. There he employed the Britishdocumentary film -makerJohn Grierson and commissioned artists including:Clive Gardiner ,E Mcknight Kauffer , andFrank Newbould to produce a series of large posters, promoting British and Empire produce. Following the demise of the EMB in 1933 Tallents moved to theGPO , transferring the EMB's film unit with him which led to the production of classic documentaries such as "Night Mail ". Tallents would go on to work for the BBC as its first Controller of Public Relations and Deputy Director General underLord Reith .In
World War II his experience was employed at theMinistry of Information . In 1948 he became founder President of the Institute of Public Relations.Stephen Tallents was knighted in 1932.
External links
* [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=4658&inst_id=16 Link to Sir Stephen Tallents' Papers at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies together with biographical notes]
*Stephen Constantine, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36412 ‘Tallents, Sir Stephen George (1884–1958)’] , "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 4 June 2007
* [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/1179594/index.html Biography at Screenonline]
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