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Simon Cowell, the impresario behind The X Factor, a popular television talent show, has often been compared to P.T. Barnum, the legendary nineteenth century showman. This paper aims to examine the alleged parallels in detail and attempts to assess this “Barnum reborn” argument.

Putative parallels between the impresarios are considered under the aegis of two long‐standing, if contentious, historical “theories”: time's cycle and the great man thesis.

Seven broad similarities between the showmen are identified: vulgarity, hyperbole, rivalry, publicity, duplicity, liminality and history. In each case, the arguments pro and con are explored, as is humanity's propensity to personify.

In accordance with the iconic literary critic Harold Bloom, who “strikes texts together to seek if they spark”, this paper strikes two celebrated showmen together to generate historical sparks.

As the result of the increased postal rates and costs of production caused by the war, the Subscription Rates and Sales Prices of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL will be raised on June 1st next. The increased prices will be as understated:—

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

SEPTEMBER is the month when, Summer being irrevocably over, our minds turn to library activities for the winter. At the time of writing the international situation is however so uncertain that few have the power to concentrate on schemes or on any work other than that of the moment. There is an immediate placidity which may be deceptive, and this is superficial even so far as libraries are concerned. In almost every town members of library staffs are pledged to the hilt to various forms of national service—A.R.P. being the main occupation of senior men and Territorial and other military services occupying the younger. We know of librarians who have been ear‐marked as food‐controllers, fuel controllers, zone controllers of communication centres and one, grimly enough, is to be registrar of civilian deaths. Then every town is doing something to preserve its library treasures, we hope. In this connexion the valuable little ninepenny pamphlet issued by the British Museum on libraries and museums in war should be studied. In most libraries the destruction of the stock would not be disastrous in any extreme way. We do not deny that it would be rather costly in labour and time to build it up again. There would, however, be great loss if all the Local Collections were to disappear and if the accession books and catalogues were destroyed.

In a world where commerce and culture are still somewhat estranged, the purpose of this paper is to show that high culture’s supreme exponents were commercially minded masters of marketing.

Historically situated, the paper adopts a biographical approach to the making of modernism’s literary masterworks. It focuses on Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, who were responsible for the modernist classics, Ulysses and The Waste Land.

The analysis identifies five fundamental marketing principles that appear paradoxical from a traditional, customer-centric standpoint, yet are in accord with latter-day, post-Kotlerite conceptualisations. The marketing of modernism did not rely on “modern” marketing.

If, at the height of the anti-bourgeois modernist movement, the “great divide” between elite and popular culture was bridged by marketing, there is no reason why contemporary culture and commerce cannot collaborate, co-operate, co-exist, coalesce.

The paper complements prior studies of “painterpreneurs”, by drawing attention to the marketing of literary masterworks.