How is Keep Calm and Carry On Doing?

So, what’s been happening with Keep Calm and Carry On in the news?

• Christmas Gifts at the Imperial War Museum
• Sterephonics Album: Guardian Review
• Etsy debate as to the origin of the term
• Simon Calder: Predictions for a “Winter of Discontent“
• Humour On Tour
• Duxbury Art Association
• Shop selling posters are “Best of Toronto“
• Random Esquire makes a purchase
• Nostalgia shops are blooming!
• “Keep Calm and Carry Me” Babygro THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE BEST FIND OF THE WEEK!
• Cheryl Cole deals with musical success
• “Over It“
• Khaleej Times (well written, but inaccurate about the posters being up!)
• Brought into the breakfast debate!
• Home decoration (how does that change it’s meaning?); and again
• Affirmations for the iPhone?
• As an inspirational musing?
• Breathe Deep… (subversion); and again
• Spoof Calendars; guy version
• The little book makes a reappearance!
• Keep Calm and Ride On
• Cards to buy (along with every other combination that you can think of on Etsy!)
• Screensaver
• Used by developers
• A cliché?
• Remember when reading healthcare articles!
• Part of an awesome home makeover
• Review of the Left Press
• A daily reminder; Gift tags
• An analysis of the design style.
• Keep Calm and Curry On
• “Fantasy English“

An interesting mix, eh? I have so much information I could add (maybe not specifically on Keep Calm and Carry On, but more generically about posters), but life is kinda getting in the way, so slow and steady it will be!

Hovis: 122 Years

Doesn’t this advert give just so much to talk about in classes… it was a great introduction to my module on “20th Century British History” – interesting to see what events they pick out as worthy of note:

• Titanic
• Suffragettes
• First World War (how young are those soldiers?)
• Motor Car
• Second World War: The Blitz, Churchill “We shall fight on the beaches”, a Spitfire
• Street Party (Victory Celebrations or the 1953 Coronation?)
• 1960s, including the 1966 celebrations
• 1980s Miners Strike
• Millennium Celebrations

Death Day: May 15th 2010

Strand: Either: ‘Death and the Arts’ or ‘Death and Culture’

Title: Death at War

Abstract:

In the Second World War, the second ‘total war’ of the Twentieth Century, death was a daily reality for both those on the fighting fronts and those on the Home Front in Britain.  The Ministry of Information (MOI), officially formed at the outbreak of the Second World War, was the central governmental publicity machine, working with other official bodies, including the War Office. 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’.

Posters produced by the MOI needed to deal with the ever-present reality of death, whilst it was often difficult to be too realistic, as graphic images of death would not necessarily have been well received. How did governmental bodies deal with the representation of death, ensuring that the seriousness of their message was conveyed, whilst avoiding too “starkly realistic posters” for those who “already knew so much of reality”. Are there clear differences between the images aimed at soldiers, industrial worker and civilians? Was humour ever seen as an appropriate tool in relation to the possibility of death? What were some of the more subtle symbols of death which recurred within wartime posters, particularly within health and “Careless Talk” campaigns?

Biographical Details:

Dr Bex Lewis is Lecturer in History, Associate Lecturer in Media Studies and Blended Learning Fellow at the University of Winchester.  The focus of her research is upon British propaganda posters, further information can be found on http://www.ww2poster.co.uk. Her most recent publication is a chapter for London Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design, and she was a major contributor to: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/.

For more: Facebook Group: Death at Winchester

Birthday Boogie in the Bunker!

“The Churchill Museum and Cabinet War rooms in association with the London Swing Dance Society is proud to host the 10th anniversary celebrations of the incomparable South London Jazz Orchestra with an evening of song and dance ‘Birthday Boogie in the Bunker!’

The Cabinet War Rooms, the historic site where Churchill led Britain to victory during the Second World War, commemorates its 70th anniverary this year from becoming operational in 1939.  In November we also commemorate Churchill’s 135 birthday. Come on out on 20 November for a night of song and dance, our birthday boogie in the bunker.”

Find out more on the Imperial War Museum site.

Royal British Legion

As we approach November 11th, it seems an appropriate time to add The Royal British Legion “Twibbon” to my Twitter account avatar (for @drbexl).

The Royal British Legion safeguards the welfare, interests and memory of those who are serving or who have served in the Armed Forces. They are one of the UK’s largest membership organisations and recognised as custodians of Remembrance. They also run the annual Poppy Appeal.

The following video doesn’t want to embed, but I thought was interesting, from GMTV.

Past Mistakes

“Whatever the genuine lessons of history, policymakers constantly make opportunistic use of the past to justify their decisions. Matthew Reisz introduces a team of historians who are fighting back against the ‘Bad History’ all around us.

Like everybody else, historians disagree violently about “the lessons of history”. Some think there aren’t any. And even among those who believe that the past is clearly relevant to the present, many are scrupulous about letting other people draw their own moral lessons. Others are happy to state, and underline, what the lessons are.

Take Vic Gatrell’s City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (2006), which won the prestigious Wolfson History Prize. The book is a study of the satirical prints, many of them gleefully lavatorial or obscene, that poured from the presses in the late 18th century.

They eventually faded away around 1820 as “respectability” set in: in Lord Byron’s words, “the age of cant” replaced “the age of cunt”. As the author notes, it is an intriguing, perhaps significant if little-remarked fact that “no Victorian produced an image of Queen Victoria farting”.

It would be possible to tell this story in fairly neutral terms. We could enjoy the social history, the dirty pictures and Gatrell’s expert elucidation of their imagery, while left free to decide for ourselves whether the shift in sensibility he describes was a good thing, a bad thing, a mixed blessing or a matter of complete indifference to us.

But Gatrell, professor of history at the University of Essex, doesn’t go in for such neutrality. He constantly buttonholes his readers, celebrating the prints’ scenes of brawling, drunkenness and low-life pleasure, and launching broadsides against piety, puritanism and political correctness.

He makes it abundantly clear that he believes the attitude of total disrespect towards authority is something we should learn from. His subject may sound fairly obscure, but he is not going to let us forget that it has huge implications for a number of ongoing debates.

Many historians, of course, explore topics far more obviously contentious and emotionally charged than late-18th-century satire. So how far do they see themselves as directly useful, offering us insights that can help us face contemporary challenges and lead better lives?”

Read full story in the Times Higher Education.

Why I Study History

The following are my notes (with a few extras added, to add a little cohesiveness), presented at the debate on Wednesday 7th October, as part of the University of Winchester’s Modern History Seminar. The original speaker was declared sick with Swine Flu, and therefore I stepped in a couple of days beforehand, but with only an hour or 2 spare to prepare! The panel, of Tom Lawson, Ryan Lavelle and myself, were brought together to put forward a case that history is not dead (as Keith Jenkins had said at the previous seminar) – see what you think, and feel free to join the debate, especially in the light of calls from the government to justify every expenditure!

• Love experimentation, so felt up to the challenge of taking on this presentation at short notice!
• Good middle-class stock, was taken to many museums as a child. Lived in a 16^th Century farmhouse – used to imagine the others who lived in it, and my brother, who studied heritage building undertook a project on the development of the house – identifying the ‘original’ and when each section was added.
• Had a very enthusiastic and engaging secondary school history teacher, who gave me an enthusiasm for the subject, and a very left-wing A-Level tutor who was very droll (we spent a lot of time talking about art, and I’ve always been fascinated by that question “what is art?”), but treated us as adults/demonstrated the relevance to everyday life, and thus fired the interest even more!
• Love the idea that ‘History’ can be translated as the idea of “His Story”, and very much see history as a story of the people involved in that – there may be some great overarching themes, but the interest for me really comes from discovering what those stories are, and, as I study popular culture, can probably just about get away with saying that I love historical novels, especially those that are well researched and give a real sense of period! Notably I’m thinking of Georgette Heyer, “The Queen of Regency Romance”, who when she died, was discovered to have kept extensive notebooks detailing clothing, habits, customs, etc. of the period.
• Visited Imperial War Museum, aged 15/16. Find many of the exhibits too ‘technical’, but was really drawn to the posters in the Home Front section, and being nosy, love gaining an idea of ‘how others live’ (quite an informal anthropological interest I think – as a tour leader in Venice, was told I clearly couldn’t be a historian as I was more interested in my guests than in San Marco). Fascinated by what people ‘consume’ from museums – I took home a postcard of ‘Women of Britain’, come into the Factories… and out of that interest, have completed:
  • A-Level project , came from seeing that colour postcard in front of me on the wall – loved it. It has been suggested that I should make an avatar of myself as that poster to use in my digital domains.
  • Always knew it would be my degree level FYP – was awaiting the chance to do it all through my degree.
  • Once I did it as an FYP, I knew there was so much more to research and was fortunate to turn it into a PhD!
  • As may be clear from my PhD, I am particularly fascinated by the use of visual culture within history, especially ephemeral material (With the face of history changing over the past few decades, particularly with an increase in interest in social and family history, there are now a perplexing number of avenues for the historian to go down, and consequently a wide-ranging and bewildering array of sources. It is our job, as historians, to assess the sources available and consider their relative importance and the methodologies required in order to use them, with the value of a source defined by the topic under consideration. Subjects such as psychology and sociology have influenced historical study for some time, and have changed the way we view the importance of some sources. Take Marwick’s example of a chocolate wrapper: he considers that, to the general historian, this is largely an insignificant source compared with other sources available, yet to the historian of the chocolate industry, or of design, it may be an essential source), which was never created for posterity, but for a particular use at the time. We could argue that this offers a more ‘genuine’ insight into how life ‘was’, but such information needs to be contextualised (and really, it’s never possible to ‘recapture’ a moment.
  • With my posters, for instance, even the briefest look gives us an idea of what people wore, the type of roles they took on, the issues that were important to SOMEONE (the nation… through the government), but a deeper look gives us insight into social relations, and, where I see an anthropological influence – a past culture – what was important to people, and how they made meaning in their lives… and how we now draw upon that! The posters of the Second World War evidently drew heavily on longer term discourses emanating from new and established institutions, although there was often a clear distinction between those that drew on the past and tradition, and those that pushed forward to the future. Such is the significance of the discourses identifiable in wartime posters, that the posters continue to resonate with a modern day audience. Vintage wartime posters sell well, and the IWM has a wide-range of reproduction items that appear popular. Through rigorous academic study, these posters can be recontextualised.
  • That interest in consumption is tied into an interest in nostalgia, and the last year has given a lot of material for me to work with on that. With the recession, the poster ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has taken on a new resonance (also Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases with Swine Flu). Once I became aware of the renewed interest in this campaign (which a number of govt ministers inc. GB have on their desk) I saw that I could have an important impact as a historian, in providing the historical background to the poster (many Americans in particular were raving on about how this poster had kept the British together throughout the Second World War, when in fact it had never made it onto the walls, and tells us far more about 2009, than it does about 1939, but as a historian, we can bring a flavour of 1939 to the modern day masses, and as a ‘professional historian’, can have an impact through being interviewed for e.g. the New York Times! So important to people, needs that professional input… Keen to encourage good quality ‘popular content’ that’s well researched, and triggers interest in history, especially cultural history.
  • Real interest in nostalgia, myth and memory
    • The myth of the ‘people’s war’ is still ‘sold’ today and boosts the heritage industry, a multi-million pound industry for the UK.[1] The posters, along with the general wartime experience, have gained mythical accretions, and most people have a knowledge of many of the wartime posters, as a product of the shared experience.
    • E.g. in the Second World War, propaganda drew upon the common ‘myth’ of England’s Green and Pleasant land, although much of the nation was industrialised, but this was something that resonated with the British so it ‘worked’… as does the KCCO, although most did not live through the war – so find it fascinating to pick that link apart.
    • We now often refer to the Second World War through ‘rose tinted glasses’, as a time when we all pulled together, ‘a cup of tea solved everything’ – so it’s interesting to see when such ideas are challenged by historians, and we dig past the stereotypes… along with the KCCO, we see 50s inspired shops such as Cath Kidston taking off…  in the recession, and it makes for interesting study… as Ryan said – why do people still visit sites/museums, etc.
    • Interdisciplinarity
      • The links with sociologists have cleared the way to study the ‘underlying framework’ of society, including more of a concern with structural patterns of such issues as the family and social class, rather than simple causal links to specific events
      • Although history tends to take an empirical approach, working more within a cultural studies framework meant that taking a more theoretical approach was appropriate, and becoming aware of a range of theories – (plumping for Foucauldian discourse analysis (identifying the underlying worldviews evident in posters, and with current students – advertising/other media))
      • This led me into teaching within Media Studies, it’s very much about analysing how the media has changed our perception of both the present and the past… and I particularly enjoy bringing the historical element to media studies students, who tend to be quite offended if it’s not from this year’s media!, and giving them that enthusiasm for understanding how present day media is informed by past events, and that advertising agents need to understand their audience and it’s history in order to be able to resonate, and project a successful message!
      • This year will also be teaching Film History for Film Studies, so it will be interesting to see how that differs from teaching visual culture within a historical context. Love to challenge the students into realising that films do not project a “real” view of history, but can be viewed through a triple lens… (Alasdair Sparks)
        • The time within which the film is set
        • The time at which the film was made
        • The time at which the film is viewed
• All change how the film is engaged with, and again, historians can contextualise that.
• Transferable skills (not that I want career/business to be the driver for all studies, interest is also key). [William Morris: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.]
  • In applying for jobs, I particularly noted the following transferable skills that I’d gained from history:
    • Research Skills (online and offline, especially archival)
    • Working through large amounts of data to produce a well-structured piece of work.
    • Critical thinking, not taking the surface meaning.
    • The ability to cohesively structure an argument, drawing in other evidence to support the case.
    • Awareness and appreciation for other cultures.
    • See the history benchmarks: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/history.asp
• History provides a distinctive education by providing a sense of the past, an awareness of the development of differing values, systems and societies and the inculcation of critical yet tolerant personal attitudes
• In my travels around the world, naturally gravitated towards a number of historical artefacts, in particular war memorials/museums, and am particularly interested in how those museums are laid out (far more than the exhibits themselves) and what methods they have used to make the material interesting – and the choices that have been made as to what have been included – and when promoting interdisciplinary research at Uni of Manchester, put forward the suggestion that a great exhibition would include a number of exhibits captioned by staff from a number of different disciplines…
• Now love the chance to pass that interest and engagement on… DO  find that harder with politics, but especially these days with so much material available online – no excuse for not including a mix of audio, video, and visual images! Get people interested at a public level, and then pull them into analysing what they take for granted…, and gain a number of valuable skills whilst they are at it…
• As a digital native, think the online world offers great potential for accessing historical material which would not otherwise be available.  Shame that the IWM only produced their digital archive of posters in 2006, 2 years after I’d finished my PhD: http://collections.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.914. It’s why I love teaching Creating and Consuming history…

You Country (Still) Needs You

That most iconic of war posters “Your Country Needs You” appeared on the front cover of Times 2 last week, discussing contemporary recruitment to the Army:

“Recruitment costs in 2007-08 were £95.1 million, an increase of nearly £30 million in six years. National marketing and advertising accounts for 27 per cent of this and the army regards this area as the way forward, although it potentially means contracting more of its business to the private sector. To this end the ARG has a civilian marketing director, Colin Cook, “embedded” alongside army staff at Upavon. “Recruitment must be a sophisticated operation,” he says. As with warfare itself, the blanket bombing approach of past campaigns — appealing to patriotism (“Your Country Needs You”) or macho careerism (“Join the Professionals”) — has been superseded by precision strategies employing “targeted messaging”.

One of Cook’s latest decisions is to appoint a new agency AKQA — best know for its Nike ads — to make the internet the Army’s primary recruitment platform. It is already on the offensive and this summer Operation Solomon took place, backed by a TV and radio campaign. The campaign, co-ordinated by the advertising agency Publicis, hinged around ads that drew people to the Army website where they could engage with an interactive game: Start Thinking Soldier.

“We need to talk to young recruits in a way they understand,” Mike Wade, the Publicis planning director, says. “A 55-year-old army brigadier is not going to be able to communicate with a 17-year-old recruit so we have to engage our audience. Start Thinking Soldier was aimed at getting people to come back again and again. It’s the model for the way everyone will have to work in the future.”

….

The recruits are frank about their reasons for joining up. Each one echoes the view that serving in Afghanistan or another theatre of war is “part of the job”. Brenden Walsh, from Hertford, is typical of the bunch: he’s a good-looking lad headed for the Grenadier Guards, who talks enthusiastically of army opportunities (“skiing, mountaineering, skydiving . . .”). When pressed about combat, he shrugs: “Those people died serving their country and I’m proud and appreciative of their efforts. What would the world be like without people like that? Terrorism has dropped as a result of our efforts out there.”

Read More

Tomorrow: Meet the Step-Grandson of “Monty”

Where The Hell Have You Been?
In November 1942, two nights after the Battle of El Alamein, a young British army officer was captured by German forces. As the Nazis deliberated about what to do with him and his peers, Richard Carver had particular reason to be afraid: unknown to anyone else, he was the stepson of Lt-Gen Bernard Montgomery, who had just inflicted the first serious land defeat on the Third Reich…

This enthralling wartime story tells of Richard’s internment in a POW camp in northern Italy – the same made famous by Eric Newby – and of his subsequent escape. Having decided on the high-risk strategy of making his way back to Allied HQ in the south, he embarked on a gruelling 500-mile journey through German-occupied territory, evading capture again and again and ultimately being saved by a family of brave Italian peasants who jeopardised not just their own lives but those of an entire village to hide him.

In the winter of 1943, a year after he had disappeared, Carver staggered back into army HQ, gaunt and exhausted – to be greeted by a delighted but characteristically gruff Monty with the now infamous words: Where the hell have you been?

This is a tale of great adventure and derring-do.  It is also an account of the relationship between a strong-willed father and his diffident son – told by the grandson, who displays some characteristics of both of them.

Tom Carver
Tom Carver was a longtime foreign correspondent with the BBC. He lived with the mujihadeen during the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, walked with the Kurds over the mountains of Iraq and reported on the Rwandan genocide and the Bosnian war. He was latterly the BBC’s Washington Correspondent and continues to live in Washington working as a writer and consultant. He is the step-grandson of Field Marshal Montgomery

Tom Carver visits Winchester on 16 October 2009  Tickets from P&G Wells, College St  tel 01962 852016

Take Part and Create Art

Maybe the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ phenomenon has passed into being passe – what do we think? I still like it, but then I would, as I’ve been interested in the subject long before it became popular, but have a much wider interest in the subject in general, and look forward to one day publishing my book before someone else pinches everything I wrote in my PhD (which is in a number of libraries, including the British Library), but I have recently come across this collection from ‘Remarks from Sparks‘, and I like them…