Cecil Beaton - What a Wonderful War
11/15/25 • 2 min read
I went to the Cecil Beaton exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery last week. It’s always a pleasure to see original prints that have been overseen by the artist themselves. I’d only ever seen the image of Eileen Dunne on the cover of Life magazine. The Life cover which was displayed next to the print was tonally quite different - much higher key, probably a feature of the press and lacked the tonal nuance of the original print.
“Beaton was commissioned by the Ministry of Information and the show contains strikingly beautiful photographs which show not only the devastation caused by Nazi bombs but also resilience and camaraderie. There are also photographs from the Middle East, India, Burma and China.
In particular his photographs of Winston Churchill, the royal family and a little girl called Eileen Dunne all played a propaganda part in helping to bring American public opinion round to intervening in the war. The Dunne photograph is especially poignant, showing a three-year-old girl with her stuffed toy and a bandage round her head after getting caught up in the blitz.
It is an incredibly important image, splashed all over the world, but who Dunne was or went on to be is still something of a mystery. “It is a story waiting to be told,” said Roberts. “But the impact of it was extraordinary.” - The Guardian
Further information on the picture is available on Time Magazine’s website.
