Sir Edward George Warris Hulton (29 November 1906, Harrogate – 8 October 1988, London) was an English magazine publisher and writer.
Edward George Warris Hulton (later Sir Edward George Warris Hulton[1]) was the illegitimate son of Sir Edward Hulton, Baronet, a newspaper publisher and racehorse owner originally from Manchester, and his second wife, the actress Millicent Warris.[2]
Educated at Harrow School, Hulton went up to Brasenose College, Oxford in 1925 but left in December 1926 without a degree.[2] He founded the Hulton Press in 1937, buying Farmers' Weekly. The Hulton Press went on to publish Leader Magazine, Eagle and Girl for children, Lilliput and the Picture Post.[2]
During World War II, Hulton was one of the members of the 1941 Committee, a group of British politicians, writers and other people of influence not generally involved with a political party but who came together in 1941 to press for more efficient production in order to enhance the war effort.[3] Hulton helped fund the Home Guard training school at Osterley Park, organizing a private supply of weapons from the United States. Though he had stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate before the war, his 1943 book The New Age supported a mixed welfare-state economy and he welcomed Attlee's 1945 government.[2]
Hulton discontinued the Picture Post in 1957 and sold the Hulton Press to Odhams two years later. He was knighted in 1957.
The photographic archive of Picture Post became an important historical documentary resource, and was set up by Sir Edward Hulton as a semi-independent operation called Hulton Picture Library. It was bought by the BBC in 1958 and incorporated into the Radio Times photo archive, which was then sold to Brian Deutsch in 1988. The Hulton Deutsch Collection was bought for £8.6m by Getty Images in 1996, and Getty has retained the Hulton Picture Library as a featured resource within its large holdings.[4]