Mary Tourtel was created in 1920, at a time when the "Express" was in competition with "The Daily Mail" and its then popular comic strip "Teddy Tail", as well as the strip "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" in "The Daily Mirror". The then news editor of the "Express", Herbert Tourtel, was approached with the task of producing a new comic strip to rival those of the "Mail" and "Mirror" and immediately thought of his wife Mary, already an established author and artist. Rupert Bear was the result and was first published as a nameless character in a strip titled "Little Lost Bear" on
Daily Express "Daily Star", "Sunday Express" and the "Daily Star Sunday" at its Dinnington site in Sheffield. The Scottish edition is printed by facsimile in Glasgow by contract printers, the London editions at Westferry Printers. In March 1962, Beaverbrook was attacked in the House of Commons for running "a sustained vendetta" against the British Royal Family in the "Express" titles. In the same month, the Duke of Edinburgh described the "Express" as "a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal and imagination. It is a vicious paper." At the height of Beaverbrook's control, in 1948, he told a Royal Commission