Harold John Timperley

Who was Harold John Timperley?

Harold John Timperley was an Australian journalist, known for his reporting from China in the 1930s, and the book What War Means based on it.

He started his newspaperman career in China in 1921 and reported for the Manchester Guardian from 1928, based in Peiping, Shanghai and Nanjing. He became an advisory editor of ASIA magazine in 1934. He married Elizabeth Chambers at Nanjing in August 1937.

After the Japanese invasion, his accounts for the Guardian were some of the first-hand information most easily available in the West. His cables from Shanghai, although at times censored, formed the basis for some early writing on the Nanjing massacre from 1937-8.

Timperley left Shanghai for London early April, 1938. There, he published the book What War Means, edited by him, which contains direct testimony as well as official documents. It received great attention, being published in the USA under the title The Japanese Terror in China. Its content has been contested by Japanese historians, including Minoru Kitamura.