Digital Resource | MacDonald 'Max' Gill

Chapter 11: The World of Tea

For centuries, tea has played a key role in people’s lives. It is probably the world’s most popular beverage and provides the perfect excuse for taking a break or welcoming guests. Once an exotic delicacy, reserved only for the wealthy, it eventually became the drink that everybody could afford. By the mid 19th Century, fleets…

Chapter 12: War and Peace

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, she was still a major world power. But by mid 1940 Britain was the only European nation still resisting the spread of Fascism. Ships carrying vital supplies from the Empire had to run the gauntlet of German submarines and suffered unsustainable losses. Prime Minister Winston Churchill realised…

Chapter 13: Flight

One of the most dramatic technical advances during Max Gill’s working life was the conquest of the air. From the moment that the Wright Brothers made the first ever powered flight in 1903, aircraft design developed at an astonishing pace. Only twelve years later, fighter aircraft were engaging in ‘dog-fights’ over the trenches of the…

Chapter 15: Personal Contributions

During his lifetime, MacDonald (Max) Gill’s work had many admirers but it became gradually less well-known in the decades following his death. The University of Brighton exhibition Out of the Shadows: MacDonald Gill decorative map posters and visual genius (summer 2011) is the first major show of Gill’s work since the mid-twentieth century and has…

Chapter 14: Private Lives

Max Gill married Muriel Bennett in 1915: she was a devoted but conventional Edwardian wife, but did not share his passion for his work. While their three children were young their house was alive with noisy activity, but by the early 1930s, the children were away at boarding school. Max often stayed working in London…