Journalist from Tallaght who shook the Empire

An Irish journalist's reports from the Crimea changed the newspaper industry and British politics. 150 years later, Conor Brady remembers William Howard Russell

One hundred and fifty years ago, the population of Great Britain was learning about the realities of war as never before.

The principal instrument of this sorrowful enlightenment was the most famous Irish journalist of all time – the war correspondent, William Howard Russell.

His graphic reports from The crimea in The Times brought something quite new to the Victorian newspaper industry. And they mobilised – for the first time through mass media – the phenomenon that we know today as public opinion.

The Crimean War (1854-1855) was a disaster, militarily, politically and in some ways morally, for Britain. At a time when Victoria's empire was supposedly at the pinnacle of its influence and might, its military elite was being kicked around on the fringe of Europe by a ramshackle army of illiterate Russian peasants.

The bravery of its fighting men was put beyond doubt when the Light Brigade charged on 25 October 1854 at Balaclava – "into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell," as Tennyson wrote.

But Russell's revelations of incompetent leadership, political corruption and blinkered strategy delivered a mighty blow to Britain's pride.

Ultimately, a prime minister – the Earl of Aberdeen – fell. The credibility of the military establishment was destroyed. And some historians will say that the rout in The crimea was perhaps the earliest intimation of the vulnerability of the Empire upon which the sun was never to set.

The sesquicentenary of the Crimean war is being marked by a crop of commemorative books, documentaries and articles. There is renewed interest in the work of Florence Nightingale. Military-history groups are visting the battlefields and the sites of the hospitals at Scutari, Balaclava and elsewhere.

The name of William Howard Russell occurs frequently in the accounts of these two bloody years. His role and his influence were hugely significant. Yet he is little known and not at all celebrated in his native country.

Described by his friends as "affable" and "courageous", he was born in 1820 at Lilyvale, near Tallaght, in Co Dublin and was educated at Trinity College and later at Cambridge. He toyed with the idea of a military career and considered the Irish bar. In 1851 he was called at the Inner Temple.

His first excursions into journalism were for The Times. He reported on Irish affairs, making his mark covering elections and faction fights. He so impressed his London editors that he was offered a job on its House of Commons staff in 1842.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years he covered many of the most important news stories of the 19th century, including the Great Famine in Ireland, (1845-1847); the Indian Mutiny (1858); the American Civil War (1861-1862); the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). It has been said that his description of the burning of Paris by the Communards in 1871 was the finest feat of 19th century eye-witness journalism.

Closer to home, he covered the Duke of Wellington's funeral, the wedding of the Price of Wales, the great Crystal Palace Exhibition and the first attempt at laying an Atlantic telegraph cable.

Much of his writing reflects a vigorous anti-colonialism. Against the norms of the day he would have been considered politically incorrect.

But it was his reporting from the Crimea that made his reputation and that led to his achieving what we would now call celebrity-status in Victorian Britain.

He was despatched to the war by the inspiring editor of The Times, John Thadeus Delane. With another Times correspondent, Thomas Cheney (later editor of the newspaper) he described the carnage, the inadequacy of medical care, lack of supplies and the dithering incompetence of the general staff.

He was lucky. He had a great editor in Delane who supported his correspondent with trenchant editorials. Newspaper circulations were rising with the spread of literacy. Technology enabled publishers to produce bigger and better newspapers. The telegraph made it possible – for the first time – for news from the battle-front to be transmitted back to London within hours.

It was Russell's vivid reportage that moved Florence Nightingale to travel to Turkey with her companions to establish hospitals near Istanbul and at Balaclava in the Crimea. It is likely that it was Russell's prose that inspired Tennyson's epic poem about the 'Charge of the Light Brigade'. Russell was there to see it and describe it. Tennyson was not.

The generals detested him and the influential military establishment at home denounced him. But intelligent readers of his reports saw in them an indictment of the corrupt promotions system, the purchasing of commissions and the aristocracy's view of the army as their personal plaything.

He was more or less shunned by the army chiefs in the Crimea. He had to provide his own tent, his own horse, his own protective clothing and his own rations – the army refusing to allow him access to their stores.

But paradoxically, it was military thinking that had enabled his journalism to achieve the immediate impact that it did.

The telegraph system that he used to file his despatches had been put in place by the army. It was deployed originally for military purposes, its possible use by a journalist unforeseen. Something similar emerged in the Vietnam war when television reporters were given the capacity to transmit footage via satellites that had been developed primarily for defence use.

He ran for Parliament in 1869, aiming to secure a Tory seat in Chelsea. He was unsuccessful in seeking to make the transition from writing to politics – not the last journalist to learn an unhappy lesson in this way. He married twice and was knighted in 1895. The journalist from Tallaght died in London in 1907. His memorial stands in St Paul's Cathedral.p

Conor Brady is Editor Emeritus of The Irish Times. He is a senior teaching fellow at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at UCD where he lectures in modern media