Walter Graebner, journalist, author, and advertising executive, was born in Prairie Township, near Columbus, Ohio, on December 16, 1909. The son of a Lutheran minister, Graebner lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Wausau, Wisconsin, before entering the University of Wisconsin in 1929. He left the university in November of his senior year to begin work in the Chicago production department of Time magazine, and he held several professional positions in the magazine's Chicago and New York offices before being asked to go to London as Time's first overseas correspondent in 1937. Except for assignments in the Soviet Union and northern Africa in 1942 and 1943, he has since made London his permanent residence.
At the end of World War II, Time Inc. promoted Graebner from London bureau chief to European Area director, ending his career as a working journalist and involving him in promotion and advertising for the international editions of Time and Life. In 1953 Graebner left Time Inc. to become managing director of Erwin, Wasey, and Co. Ltd., of London, one of Europe's largest advertising agencies. When the company was acquired by Interpublic Ltd. in 1963, Graebner resigned in order to devote more time to personal pursuits, though he retained an office at Interpublic and continued as director and part-time consultant.
During his career as a journalist, Graebner authored and edited a number of books based on wartime experiences, and selections of his reporting were included in two anthologies of the work of Time Inc.'s correspondents. In the early 1950s he wrote My Dear Mr. Churchill, an informal collection of observations and anecdotes based on his friendship with the former prime minister. Published after Churchill's death in 1965, the book appeared on best-seller lists in Great Britain and was translated into several foreign languages.
