FEATURE: The PR century - Events earlier this century provided the primordial stew that gave birth to the rise of PR. Robert Gray turns back the pages of time to where it all began

It is not entirely fanciful to suppose that centuries from now historians will look back and define the 100 years leading to the new millennium as the public relations age. Certainly this has been the century in which PR as we understand it today was born and, fed by the explosion in mass media, grew to become a discipline with a vital role to play at the very heart of politics, commerce, entertainment and the voluntary sector.