It’s interesting watching someone else give an overview of your research, here’s one of the Imperial War Museum curators picking out some of the bits that she’s found interesting from the book (easy to buy from Imperial War Museum direct, or Amazon). You can read a few other thoughts about my book here.
You may recognise some of the information in radio interviews from my blog post from yesterday, and from the MMU press release, but finally, later this month, my book Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth About the Poster, is published by the Imperial War Musuem.
Here’s three live radio interviews I did this morning (just waiting for BBC Radio Newcastle to air):
In 1997, I first wrote about Keep Calm and Carry On as a side-note in my undergraduate dissertation. In 2004, it was once again mentioned briefly (when looking at the series it was created in) in my PhD on ‘The planning, design and reception of British Home Front propaganda posters’ at the University of Winchester, and in 2005, it wasn’t even considered relevant for the content that I prepared for ‘The Art of War‘ for The National Archives.
In March 2009, via a press request from the Daily Express, I discovered that Keep Calm and Carry On had ‘become a thing’, and started sharing the information I had from within my PhD, and collecting variations of it as it appeared in the press. In 2012, Charlie Brooker complained that we should give up making up variations of the slogan, but the design and the slogan continues to appear everywhere, in fact we could say that it has become ‘iconic’, although few know the full true story behind the poster.
I am delighted to announce that this is being rectified, as on on 26th October 2017, my 80-page book Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth Behind the Poster, published by the Imperial War Museum, will be available to buy – it’s a perfect stocking filler – drawing on years of historical research but designed to be very readable (as is my other book Raising Children in a Digital Age) – and it reveals a number of interesting facts that readers may be unaware of!
Look out for the Imperial War Museum press release today.
The book tells the story of the now infamous Keep Calm and Carry On poster, produced by the British government in the Second World War. The poster was part of a series of three (with another produced shortly after) designed to keep morale up on the outbreak of war, when it was expected that the country would be subjected to immediate and sustained bombardment. As noted, in my earlier work, Keep Calm and Carry On was merely a footnote to the other two posters in the series ‘Your Courage‘, and ‘Freedom is in Peril‘ – known as the ‘red posters’, despite the fact that they also came in green and blue! Those two posters, that were displayed almost as soon as the war started attracted negative coverage from the press who were a) threatened by possible censorship b) felt that the government was out of touch with contemporary thinking as to the kind of messages that were appropriate.
This book is divided into 4 sections:
Overall, the book seeks to set the story of that well known poster against the wider archival research I did for my PhD in an accessible and interesting way.
In the press release, I say “The design of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has penetrated into our everyday lives since its rediscovery in 2001. In this new book, the life, death and resurgence of the design is placed into the context of posters in the wartime period, whilst tapping into why the poster has become such a cultural phenomenon.”
For years, when I have said to people what my PhD research is about, I’ve got the response ‘ah, Your Country Needs You‘ (well yes, but that’s First World War), whereas over the past few years, it has very much changed to ‘ah, Keep Calm and Carry On‘, although very few people seem to know that it wasn’t actually used during the war, or that it in preparation many months before war was declared. I’ve never wanted to be an ivory tower academic, so I have always wanted my research to have a wider reach, and be accessible to others. As a trained historian, I think an understanding of the past helps us understand where we are in the present, as people, and as a nation. I continue to draw on aspects of this in my contemporary work as Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing and Manchester Metropolitan University: good communication and understanding of your audience are key to good marketing on any platform!
Keep Calm and Carry On items continue to appear in every tourist shop, and my Google alert for the phrase still pings every time that there is a crisis – it’s incredibly resonant with the British public, but also more widely around the world – Americans in particular brought it during the financial crisis, and a large number have been sold to German nationals! The Imperial War Museum has a commitment to tell people’s stories from wartime, and in the year of their 100th anniversary, they were keen to commission this short book about one of the key items within their archives that the public is interested in, and wants to know more about.
Barter Books discovered the poster in the bottom of an archive box in 2001; they sold copies from their shop; in 2005 it was picked up by The Guardian newspaper after which 9,000 were sold in a month. They sold it to doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, schools, army bases, embassies, government departments, and even to Downing Street, and felt it struck a chord anywhere that works at a hectic pace. In 2009 it went global, and I started collecting variations.
Celebrities wearing the slogan on T-shirts brought it to public attention, including Rupert Grint at a Harry Potter film premiere, Chris Evans on The One Show, and James May on Top Gear, and it was known that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had it up in his office.In the UK there has been a constant ‘looking back’ to WW2 ‘a time that we all pulled together over a cup of tea’ in a nostalgic fashion. Nostalgia hits when times seem unsettled, we look back to a time when things felt safer and we look to those times as to how we deal with the current crisis. It doesn’t matter if it was ‘the true reality’ (you can ask my colleague Sarah Penny for more about nostalgia and marketing). People talk about how Keep Calm and Carry On as a phrase has resonance for them in times of crisis, e.g. for me right now, that’s breast cancer (and yes, it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month in October).
The Keep Calm and Carry On poster wasn’t used during the wartime. Notes in files at The National Archives show that at the end of Sept there was a call to ‘reserve our main poster for the crash of the first air bombardment’. On 20 November 1939, it was distributed regionally to e.g. post offices to be held in storage for distribution in case of need. The paperwork trail then goes cold: the most likely story that can be pieced together is that due to paper shortages the posters would have been pulped, but because of the wide distribution there will the odd poster or roll of posters found (like there was on the Antiques Roadshow). I’ve seen a couple of images of small version stuck up on the wall, but it is entirely possible that these were put up without official sanction – after looking at these posters since 1997, and investigating these posters throughout, there’s no evidence they were ever officially sanctioned for display. By the time that the Blitz arrived in 1940, the notion of ‘The People’s War’ was popular, and it was clear that people wanted to be told what to do, rather than needed to be told to keep their chins up, and this kind of message was probably considered inappropriate for use, especially after all the other ‘red posters’ were given such a negative reception by the press.
If you hadn’t already picked up by now, the poster was part of a series, but never used during the war itself. Unlike contemporary messages, preparing, printing, distributing all took time, so the progress of the war, and the public mindset, needed to be anticipated in advance. The design was still at the printers when war broke out: colour designs were seen as more effective, although more £, but the paper took days to prove.
… and of course, they’ll be more!
Well, I want to know what versions you’ve seen or enjoyed. I collected variations on my blog, and on Facebook for a couple of years. Some that I mention in my book are:
I’m really interested to see (British) regional variations, such as Stop your squinnying, it will be kushti – Portsmouth and Keep Calm and Do it Dreckley – Cornwall
Bex Lewis has a background as a cultural communications historian and digital practitioner, with a PhD in Second World War posters, in which she wrote the history of Keep Calm and Carry On. She is Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Visiting Research Fellow at St John’s College, Durham University. She is a frequent speaker, writer and facilitator, and is author of the popular Raising Children in a Digital Age (2014).
For further press information and interview requests please contact: Alicia Powell, Assistant Press Officer, apowell@iwm.org.uk or 0207 416 5436
It’s available from Imperial War Museum I Amazon – only £6.99, although if you’re local, I may be stocking up on a few at a discount – and can even sign them if you’d like!
Within my 1997 undergraduate dissertation, and my 2004 PhD thesis, I (unintentionally) provided the story of the now ubiquitous ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ (KCCO) poster (read an extract here), whilst I was writing about two very early posters produced by the British Government in the Second World War – Your Courage, and Freedom is in Peril. At the same time, the government produced KCCO, with the intention of saving it for use when under attack – and these were distributed in much greater quantities than the other posters (which might explain why the odd one made it onto the wall), but after so much negative kick-back on the other two posters, and with the benefit of some wisdom that we weren’t fighting “The Great War” any more, it was deemed inappropriate, and likely instructed to be pulped for it’s precious paper.
In 2009, I picked up that the ‘KCCO’ story had become ‘a thing’, and started following it on this blog, and managed to visit Barter Books a couple of times! Alongside, I was keen to publish my PhD thesis, and working on my book proposal in between jobs/job applications, and all the other fun of being a young academic. In September I finally sent the book proposal off to the Imperial War Museum (where my story starts with the purchase of a postcard of Women of Britain – Come Into the Factories), and by November, was being offered a book contract for a 20,000 word book that could be sold ‘as a present’ with the Imperial War Museum, giving more of the backstory – and with a plan to seek a joint publisher for a deeper book based more around the full PhD thesis… we’ll see if this comes off, but meantime – yesterday I signed the contract – to deliver 20,000 words by April 10th (so that’ll be my weekends gone then!)!
The working title for the short book is: Keep Calm and Carry On : The Truth Behind the Poster, with an anticipated launch in the autumn/winter 2017.
The full PhD can already be accessed in PDF form from The British Library
A well illustrated work that accompanied an exhibition of war posters at the Imperial War Museum. It was edited by Joseph Darracott, the head of the Art Department at the IWM, with many illustrations prefaced by a short introductory piece. Each of the colour poster illustrations, most of which are British (a reflection of the holdings of the IWM, which contains some 20-30,000 British posters) are accompanied by biographical information about the artist, and contextual information about the situation in which the posters were produced.
“Posters are not designed to last, rather, they are intended to catch the mood of the moment and turn it to advantage. … As we look at war posters, we see our modern world reflected.” [p9]
