The Times of April 21, 1926, is a snapshot into a sepia world: Winston Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer, communism was on the march, Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman was playing at the Capitol Haymarket, and on the letters page, old colonial hands debated the existence of the four-tusked elephant.

And on page 14 of the newspaper, squeezed between news of the Economy Bill and divisions in the German Cabinet, was a small item reporting the birth of a child who would become Queen Elizabeth II. “The Duchess of York was safely delivered of a Princess at 2.40 this morning. Both mother and daughter are doing well.”

The mother became the Queen Mother; the daughter went on to rule Britain — so far for more than 54 years.

Looking back, the birth announcement seems bizarrely understated. News of the birth came too late for the first edition of the paper, and had to be slipped into the last edition. But in truth, the new baby was but a minor royal, third in line to the throne. No one could anticipate that her uncle would abdicate, her father would become George VI and she would eventually succeed him, long to reign over us.

It is a deep source of pride to me that a round of golf played by one Captain F. P. Macintyre in the Army Championship, reported on page 7 of that day’s paper (he “played a steady round”), was considered more newsworthy than the birth of the future queen. That entirely obscure army golfer was my grandfather.

The Britain of 80 years ago was an utterly different world, an interwar society imbued with Edwardian imperial confidence but already buffeted by change: looming industrial unrest and the Great Depression, the “Red Menace”, the first poisonous shoots of fascism.

The Times was then the paper of the prosperous ruling class. The advertisements invited readers with new babies (the Duchess of York, presumably, included) to shop at Harrods: “Such a wealth of dainty wee wearables from which to choose”. [page 9, col 6] The bright young things of the 1920s danced at the Kit-Cat Club, bought fine leghorn hats for 59s 6d at Debenham & Freebody [page 17, col 7], and studied the Court Circular: “Ada Countess of Lauderdale has left Bournemouth . . .”

Times readers bought British and thought British. “Own a British Car,” insisted the ad on page 9. “A British Car is a car made entirely in the British Isles of British materials and fitted with British-made tyres and accessories. British cars for British folk.”[(page 9, col 1.]

The First World War was still fresh in the memory, and the sporting world reflected a victorious Army in repose. The runners at Pontefract that day included War Hero, Peace Declared and Knobkerrie. Cricket was a religion that “goes on from generation to generation in the same spirit of generous and fair-minded rivalry”. [page, 15]

Some of the reporting seems oddly contemporary. A row had erupted over whether to impose a tax on betting. On page 15, a far-sighted report warned of declining fish stocks in the North Sea because of over-fishing. The columnist Paul Louis Courier frets, as columnists have always fretted, over how to reach exactly the right word-length: “How the dickens am I accurately to reckon up my own words? I would rather eat them.” [page 12] As this columnist can attest, the word counter on a computer makes the task no easier. The front page, then the preserve of announcements and personal ads, reflected the quotidian concerns of a placid society. “ABC — I am prepared to pay the sum named — C.” “£3 Reward – lost black chow bitch puppy.” “Unwanted false teeth gratefully received . . .”

On the back page, the paper published photographs of the Australian cricket team after lunch at 10 Downing Street, and of the new Underground station at Piccadilly Circus.

Yet beneath the veneer of a secure, stratified society, tumultuous change was brewing, at home and abroad. The newspaper’s “book of the week” that week in 1926 was False Dawn by Al Carthill, which explored the “current revolutionary tendencies” abroad and predicted “Communism will come, if at all, as evolutionary process”. Civil war raged in China, and the paper wondered when a stable government might eventually emerge in that country: “Who gives it to her and what form it assumes are matters for the Chinese to settle themselves.”

The newspaper’s Berlin correspondent predicted trouble over “the control of German armaments”. The Nationalists “show an ugly temper”, he reported. The second volume of Hitler’s Mein Kampf had just been published.

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