Aylmer Vallance

Gerald Aylmer Vallance (4 July 1892–24 November 1955), born George Alexander Gerald Vallance, was a Scottish newspaper editor.

Born in Partick,^[1] Vallance studied at Fettes College in Edinburgh and Balliol College, Oxford, before serving with the Somerset Light Infantry and the General Staff of the during World War I.^[2] After the war, he was appointed as General Secretary of the National Maritime Board^[3] and became a director of the .^[2]

From 1930 to 1933, Vallance was Assistant Editor of The Economist.^[2] He was then appointed Editor of the News Chronicle, which he took in a more radical direction, investigating and critically reporting on the British Union of Fascists, and recruiting writers such as Vernon Bartlett, Tangye Lean, and Gerald Barry. He also launched a Saturday supplement on green newsprint. However, he resigned in 1936 after pressure from subeditors over his persistent drunkenness and lukewarm support for the Liberal Party.^[3] He spent the remainder of the decade as an occasional contributor to the Evening Standard, and was finance editor of the New Statesman from 1937 to 1939.^[2]

During World War II, Vallance was a Lieutenant-Colonel, working as the liaison between the War Office and the Political Warfare Executive.^[4] A supporter of the communist Partisans, he named a son Tito, after Josip Broz Tito.^[5] From 1950 to 1955, he returned to the New Statesman as Assistant Editor. He also wrote several books, on the press and on economic affairs.^[2]

Personal life[]

In 1928 he married Phyllis Taylor Birnstingl, née Reid. They were divorced in 1940. He subsequently married Helen Chisholm, née Gosse the same year. They had two children, a son, Tito, and a daughter, Margaret. Again the marriage ended in divorce. Finally in 1950, he married Ute Christina Fischinger, daughter of a German Army officer and a German resistance fighter, who after his death, married photographer and physician Nico Jesse in 1961.^[1]

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