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culture

David: A bibliographic review revealed Stefan: I would add the very enjoyable challenge of trying
important visual sources in blogs from the city to put ourselves in Derso and Kelen’s shoes at the time they
library in Gyor, Hungary, the town of Kelen’s drew their cartoons so as to best interpret the messages they
birth, and a few books containing their cartoons, were trying to get across. Their habit, unusual in cartoonists,
notably, as Stefan says, that which you yourself of naming the caricatured figures in their cartoons helped,
published with John Fox on the League of as did their comments accompanying some of the cartoons
Nations. The primary source was the corpus of published in portfolios.
cartoons, artwork and writings in the Derso and
Kelen Collection at Princeton University, which DIVA: How long did it take from when you started on this
Kelen’s wife and daughter donated to the Mudd project until it was finished?
Library in 2002. The League of Nations Archives David: A decade prior to embarking on the book, I began to
at the Palais holds a smaller collection. Many research archives and literature on the League. In the summer
images were sourced from Stefan’s bibliographic of 2015, historian and author Susan Pedersen drew my attention
collection. Our art-historian adviser, Dr Julia to the Derso and Kelen archives at Princeton University and to
Secklehner, kindly provided photographs from Kelen’s writings. After my 2019 meeting with Stefan and viewing
her own research on the Princeton archives his portfolios, we began to correspond about the cartoons.
and Jean-Claude Pallas, author of Histoire et In May 2020, we agreed to work together on a presentation
architecture du Palais des Nations, also helped for a centennial conference on the League organised by the
to identify sources and provided a digitised University of Edinburgh, which promoted the event using the
photograph of Derso and Kelen’s masterpiece, cartoon located in the Drummond private papers.
L’Assaut de la Tribune, the cartoon based on
‘L’Escalade’ (pp 87-90). Stefan: We began researching and planning the book in March
2021; started writing it in June; secured a publisher, Lund
Stefan: Virtually all the images we used in the Humphries, a leading UK art publisher, in January 2022; and
book come either from the Derso and Kelen submitted a completed draft to them by their deadline of 1
archive at Princeton, the United Nations Archive July 2022. After the inevitable many textual amendments and
at Geneva, or from my own collection of Derso other necessary preliminaries, the book was printed and then
and Kelen portfolios, books and ephemera. published on 1 June 2023. We launched it at a presentation at
The latter include, in particular, all but one Westminster Methodist Central Hall in London on 11 July, the
of the issues of the short-lived, 1938-39, US site of the first UN General Assembly meeting on 10 January
magazine, Ken, in which their striking images 1946, a very gratifying connection.
were published, several of which we illustrate.
In collecting these, I was much helped by a US Q: Finally, do you have other book projects in the pipeline?
book dealer whose enthusiasm for the project David: I remain inquisitive about how the UN came to be
came almost to equal my own! Having all this served by an international civil service that is independent
Derso and Kelen material immediately to and impartial, and plan to continue to document the work of
hand was exceedingly helpful to us. Extremely those who pioneered international cooperation.
helpful, too, was the professional assistance of
a photographer friend - acknowledged in the Stefan: As I mentioned at our Geneva talk, I am writing a book
book - who prepared the images for publication about the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald.
and whom we have to thank, along with Lund It will be called ‘The Rubaiyat of the Great War’, as it is about
Humphries, for the quality of the reproductions. parodies of the poem written by soldiers during the First
World War. At that time, the poem was very popular and well-
DIVA: What was the most challenging part? known, sadly, no longer true. The parodies are not critical or
David: Archives had to be accessed remotely mocking about the poem or its author, as is so often the case
during the early years of Covid, and the turn- with parodies, but simply make use of the poem to comment
around on requests for digitised copies was on the conditions under which soldiers lived, fought and
sometimes slow because of the restricted services. died, and on their feelings about the war. It will, I hope, be a
However, socially-distanced visits became contribution to the literature of the war and of the poem. My
possible in September 2021 to the Archives of sources are in my extensive Great War book and ephemera
the League in Geneva and, in March 2022, to collection, and almost all the parodies I have discovered are
those of Princeton University. unknown. I am also writing more articles for Illustration. •

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