• http://www.ww2poster.co.uk
• http://www.winchester.ac.uk/designproject
• http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/artofwar (major content contributor)
  • Press Articles: Hampshire Chronicle; Venta; news@winchester

A full portfolio is available at: http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk

• ‘Posters as Propaganda’ (with David Bownes), for ‘London Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design’, edited by Oliver Green and David Bownes, commissioned by the London Transport Museum (Lund Humphries, forthcoming October 2008)
• ‘Docs on the Box – TV Medical Dramas’, Chapter for ‘Playing God: Ethics and Technology in Medical Dramas‘ (Damaris Culturewatch, May 2006)

• “‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’: The Government’s Information Security Campaign on the Home Front”, in Everyone’s War: The Journal of the Second World War Experience Centre (No.15, Spring/Summer 2007)

• Lucy Noakes Women and the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex 1907-1948 (2006), for Journal of Contemporary British History (March 2008)

• ‘My Sister’s Keeper‘ (July 2009)
• ‘Easy Virtue‘ (May 2009)
• Challenging a fast food culture (September 2006)
• ‘Docs on the Box – TV Medical Dramas’, see above
• Hitch (July 2005)
• Struggling to Achieve: ‘The Games’ (April 2005)

• Walker, R. ‘Remixed Messages‘, New York Times, July 5th, 2009, p.18
• Edge, S. ‘Sign of the Times‘, Daily Express, March 19th 2009, p.36
• Wang, S., and Schwarz, W.H.E., “Icon of Chemistry: The Periodic System of Chemical Elements in the New Century”, in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2009, 48, 2–14. See footnote 27.
• Sladen, C., ‘Wartime Holidays and the ‘Myth of the Blitz” in Cultural and Social History (2005: 2). See p.224
• Sladen, C., ‘Don’t panic!’ in Oxford Magazine, No. 231, 4th Week, Michaelmas Term, 2004, See pp.3-4
• Sladen, C. ‘Holidays at Home in the Second World War’ in Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 37 Issue 01 (1 January 2002). See p.68
• Aulich, J., War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication, 2007 (Imperial War Museum/Thames & Hudson) as a ‘Useful Website’.

See my notes here.

The Ministry of Information (MOI), officially formed at the outbreak of the Second World War, was the central governmental publicity machine. Its role was to tell the citizen ‘clearly and swiftly what he is to do, where he is to do it, how he is to do it and what he should not do’.

Considering posters produced by the MOI during the Second World War, this paper will identify masculine identities, both visible and invisible, defined as ‘normal’. These images were interpreted by artists, accepted by the government, and published in wartime posters aimed at the ‘civilian army’.

“Keep Calm and Carry On” has had a credit-crunch induced renaissance in 2009. Mass-Observation, collecting reaction at the time, found many decreed them “too solemn” with a yearning for a “bit of humour”. Wartime propaganda was not produced without planning, planning for the 1939 campaign had commenced in 1935. The MOI had comprehensive strategies, covering not only posters, but radio, press and film.

“Health is a Munition of War” declared the “Fighting Fit” exhibition in 1943: poor health led to absenteeism, which had an impact on war production. This paper will examine surviving posters and public information films from the campaign “Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases” as forms of inter-textual promotion. Cinema and posters, both visual medium, complemented each other in a cohesive strategically planned campaign, drawing upon images of how it was ‘appropriate’ for the democratic British ‘citizen’ to behave in a time of war, often using the British ’secret weapon’ of humour.

I presented a short paper on ‘informal education’, regarding the representation of men and women in VD posters.

There are countless objects that can be purchased adorned with images and slogans from wartime posters: not only postcards and reproduction posters, but mugs, key rings, T-shirts, chocolate bars, playing cards, and many others. Money would not be spent producing such objects unless it was felt there was a market for them, and such objects have been produced by the Imperial War Museum and the Public Record Office, amongst others, for many years, in the knowledge that they will sell.

The paper will consider why such products do sell, with their appeal based not only upon their immediate visual impact, often the reason they were successful in the first place, but upon their status as social and historical documents, and as a reminder of a past, mythical or otherwise. Many people remember the posters from the war, as can be illustrated by replies received from a questionnaire distributed, in 1997-9, as part of the PhD project.

Posters often trigger memories, in particular causing people become nostalgic about, for instance, ‘the Blitz spirit’. This has largely been deemed a myth, and it will be interesting to consider how far such a ‘spirit’ was propagated through the war posters, and how far the posters have contributed to such a ‘myth’. Yet, memories of war posters are not restricted to those who can remember the war, people of all generations can list many war poster slogans, such as ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’. There are two probable factors which account for this: many slogans have become tied up with the mythology of war; and war posters are used extensively as illustration in both children’s and populist ‘coffee table’ books, where the poster is used to get across a point pictorially, as was the original purpose.

The paper will take into account the original purpose of propaganda and advertising posters, designed to be ephemeral, but also memorable. It will attempt to define what factors determine if a poster can be deemed a ‘success’, especially from a later point in time. The paper will also briefly reflect upon how changes in history have enabled the poster to be considered as a historical source.

With Gary Peatling ‘Appeasement and public history now and in the future’.

The day included a paper given by myself, entitled ‘World War II Propaganda and the Image of Britain’. Once a brief definition of propaganda and the job of the poster had been established, three posters from the First World War were considered, demonstrating the belief that most appealed to either a mythical past, a sense of good sportsmanship, or obedience to a sense of authority. The Second World War was even more of a ‘total war’ than the First had been, and those involved needed to know that they were not only fighting AGAINST something, but also FOR it. The main focus of the paper was then upon two posters ‘Your Britain, Fight for it Now’, produced in 1942, around the time of the Beveridge Report. On the one hand we saw the nostalgic image, depicted by Frank Newbould, of a pastoral and rural Britain, which encourages effort in order to maintain perceived past traditions, whilst Abram Games depicted an urban image as an image of change for a better Britain, a real fight for the future.

Based upon my undergraduate thesis, and progress of the research project so far, “In June, Rebecca Lewis spoke to us on the subject of British Home Front Posters of WW2. Rebecca is very knowledgeable about her subject and spoke not only on the design of the posters but also on the political motivations behind them. The talk was illustrated by a large number of slides and we certainly came away with a better understanding of the subject.”
Ian Bayley, The 1940s Society