Related Projects of Interest

There are many others working on, or have already completed, theses that are also of interest to me as a researcher in this topic, and therefore may also be of interest to others.

• Boon, T., ‘Film and contestation of public health in interwar Britain ‘, PhD, 1999
• Chapman, J., ‘Official British Film Propaganda during the Second World War’, PhD, 1995
• Carruthers, S.L., ‘Propaganda, publicity and political violence: the presentation of terrorism in Britain, 1944-60′, PhD, 1994
• Davies, S.R., ‘Propaganda and popular opinion in Soviet Russia, 1934-41′, D.Phil, 1994
• Efstathiadou, A., ‘The Art of Seeing: visual representation of women during WWII in Greece and UK’, PhD, in progress
• Fisher, S. J. ‘The Blitz and the Bomber Offensive: A Case Study in British Home Propaganda, 1939-45′, PhD, 1993
• Griange, P., ‘Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in 1990s America’, PhD, date?
• Howling, I.R.C. ”Our Soviet Friends’: the presentation of the Soviet Union in the British Media 1941-45′, M.A., 1988
• Kertesz, M.A. ‘The Enemy – British Images of the German people during the Second World War’, D.Phil, 1992
• McCarty, E.A. ‘Attitudes to women and domesticity in England, c.1939-1955′, D.Phil, 1994
• McPherson, E., ‘The impact of the Second World War on local authorities in South Lancashire 1935-45′, PhD, 1995
• Noakes, L. ‘Gender and British national identity in wartime: a study of the links between gender and national identity in Britain in the Second World War, the Falklands War and the Gulf War.’, D.Phil, 1996
• Parker, K.L. ‘Women MPs, Feminism and Domestic Policy in the Second World War’, D.Phil, 1994
• Rennie, P., ‘An investigation into the design, production and display contexts of industrial safety posters produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents during WW2′, PhD, 2004
• Royall, K., ‘Posters of the Second World War: The Fourth Arm of Defence?’, M.A., 1991
• Ryan, S.F., ‘British perceptions of the meaning of the war: the government, the public and the fate of France: 1939-42′, M.Phil, 1993
• Sinclair, G., ‘Propaganda and Churchill in the Second World War: the Making of an Icon’, PhD, in progress
• Spears, L.W., An Enquiry into the use of propaganda on the Home Front during World War Two with special reference to the role and effectiveness of the poster as a means of conveying Government policy MA, 1998
• Taylor, P.H., ‘The role of local government during the second world war, with special reference to Lancashire.’, PhD, 1992
• Taylor, P.M., ‘The projection of Britain: British overseas publicity and propaganda, 1914-1939, with particular reference to the work of the news department of the Foreign Office.’, PhD, 1978

Please contact me with your details if you are also working upon a topic of interest, at any level, and wish to be added to the list. Please provide a link to a webpage if you have one, otherwise a synopsis of your project would be good.

See theses completed and in progress for more history theses. If your university is a registered user, you can access abstracts of theses online. Mine was completed in 2004.

Min.

Extract from “Chapter 2: Placing the British Experience of the Propaganda Poster in Context”

As I prepare materials for ‘Film History’, it seems a good time to go back to my thesis and access the section of the varying art movements leading to British graphic design styles as the Second World War broke out.

(c) Bex Lewis, 2004

This next section draws on the methodological framework outlined in chapter one to think about aspects of form and style. It sees poster design as an encoding through which ‘truths’ were produced, and form and style as social and political entities through which ‘power’ works. We will analyse the encoding of the visual in terms of the utilitarian, the disruption of traditional ideas, the political, and as a medium for transmitting ideas. Here, we will illustrate ways in which poster design disrupts notions of high art and images produced for the populace. This relates to one ‘contest’ between artists and designers over the power to define the poster and the way it later drew on older traditions of ‘high’ art. Here, we will trace the ‘institutionalisation’ of poster design in terms of groups’ power to produce posters. As the Introduction outlined, there is a wide ranging debate about the purpose of a poster, and indeed what constitutes a poster itself, is. This is partly dependent on the differing views as to what can be considered the predecessors and origins of the poster: ‘[i]n one sense the poster is a modern invention; in another it is as old as history.’ Some have identified forerunners and precedents for the poster. It ‘could be said that any pictorial representation publicly displayed has something of the poster in it, especially if the object is propaganda.’[1] This has led to diverse identifications such as cave paintings,[2] biblical precedents,[3] evidence from the previous ‘industrialised’ nations, [4] shop signs,[5] printed notices,[6] and political cartoons.[7] Most of these, however, were produced singly. It can be argued that the poster only became a truly modern mass medium in the nineteenth century, having developed as societies and technologies evolved.

Women of Britain, Come Into the Factories

Great things come out of little postcards. I bought this poster as a postcard in the Imperial War Museum whilst 15-17, and then put it on the wall, along with a few others, but it’s the colour of this one that stood out, and that I remembered when it came to choosing my A-Level history project, which then became an undergraduate dissertation, and then a PhD.

Poster Title: Women of Britain, Come Into the Factories

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Date: Probably 1941

Artist Philip Zec

Printer Lowe and Brydone, London Size 29 3/4″ x 19 1/4″

Sources IWM PST 3645

Other Information: Some catalogues list this as being by Donald Zec, Philip’s brother. Donald Zec has recently completed a biography of Philip Zec’s work, and this poster is definitely by Philip Zec.

British Library Entry: PhD Thesis

It used to be that every PhD thesis was automatically collected by the British Library (in hard copy), but as the number of PhD’s have increased, this policy changed (around the time that I finished mine, 2004), and University Libraries were asked to keep a copy of each PhD thesis (which they generally already did), and make it available to the British Library if requested. I was informed by the University of Winchester library that as my thesis had been requested “enough” times (no, I don’t know what “enough” is), that my thesis had therefore been digitised by the British Library and here is it’s catalogue entry – there’s also copies at the Imperial War Museum and Mass-Observation, as well as still in the University Library – and I have more than one copy! Just need to find the time to turn it into a book…

Freedom is in Peril T-Shirt

The Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park in London seemed a good place to wear a bit of a statement t-shirt, and thanks to Freedom is in Peril for sending me this t-shirt!

Unfortunately, it does make people stare at your chest, but great slogans on t-shirts can get some great conversations going! This post was picking up pretty quickly by the Proms in the Park tweeters and re-tweeted!

A Little History
Well, I am a history lecturer!

Alongside ‘Your Courage…’, ‘Freedom is in Peril, Defend it with All Your Might’ was published, distributed and displayed almost immediately as war was declared. Even during the planning stages criticisms were raised that ‘Freedom’ is rather an abstract concept and was “likely to be too academic and too alien to the British habit of thought”. Mass-Observation reported that people felt that they could not defend ‘freedom’ because they cannot feel that they are being attacked, and this remained a problem throughout the ‘phoney war‘. The ‘Your Courage…’ poster probably attracted more anger than ‘Freedom is in Peril’ as there were twice as many produced as ‘Freedom is in Peril’, and the distinction between ‘You’ and ‘Us’ clearly struck a particular nerve. Keep Calm and Carry On of course never attracted any press coverage as it was never displayed.

Responsibility for the failure of campaigns was placed squarely with the government as it meant that, either the people had not been made to feel the urgency of the message, or that “the leaders have not spoken in a language which the people can understand and respond to.” The fact that “three-quarters of the population left school before they were fifteen” appeared to have been ignored. Minister of Supply, Herbert Morrison’s simple slogan ‘GO TO IT!’, echoed in posters, appears to have been far more positively received than “instructions in stiff and incomprehensible language”, although there was concern that this campaign would not mean anything once taken out of context of the speech in which it was made, a fear that appears to have been justified since ‘What is ‘it’?’ was scrawled upon posters.

Extracted from undergraduate dissertation and PhD thesis. Check out the production numbers here.

Men at War: Masculinities, Identities and Cultures (10-11 September 2009)

Currently preparing for the conference: Men at War: Masculinities, Identities and Cultures, Looking forward to presenting an image-laden paper! Gender theory is not exactly my field, but I have found it interesting dablling, and looking for ways to apply my other knowledge. Meantime, early start to the conference, and I’m one of the first panels… looking forward to meeting new people – and Julie Anderson and Ana Carden-Coyne who I knew from University of Manchester!

Quoted in the Independent

Extract from John Rentoul Blog:

According to a remarkable PhD thesis by Rebecca Lewis:

‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ was printed and held in reserve for when the necessity arose, for example, a severe air-raid, although it was never actually displayed.

Lewis does not say why it was held back. It may be that the tone seemed right before the German tanks rolled into Poland, but that, once the war had actually begun, it lacked the sense of urgency demanded by the premonition of total war.

But she does quote from contemporary evidence that the two posters that were used were widely disparaged. According to Mass-Observation:

‘Your Courage’ was the second most-mentioned remembered slogan … it still existed everywhere, and was deemed mostly annoying and inappropriate for the wartime situation. The wording of ‘Your Courage … will bring us victory’ was criticised. There was some evidence the combination of ‘your’ and ‘us’ ‘suggested to many people that they were being encouraged to work for someone else’, with the ‘your’ referring to the civilian, the ‘us’ to the Government … ‘Freedom is in Peril’ was also deemed ineffective, blamed on ‘the abstractness of the words, not one of which had any popular appeal’.

“Freedom is in Peril” has also enjoyed a bit of postmodern popularity, partly in the wake of the “Keep Calm” fashion. But it wasn’t taken at face value at the time:

The Times had described the posters as ‘egregious and unnecessary exhortations’, ‘insipid and patronising invocations’, which were unneeded and wasteful of funds, comparing the posters unfavourably to those produced by the French.

Read the full blog entry.

Note: Yes, I am catching up on the summer’s Google Alerts!

The Formation of the Ministry of Information (PhD Extract)

Extract from PhD thesis. © Rebecca Lewis, 2004 (Extracted from the 3rd Chapter). Please note that this information is COPYRIGHTED, so please reference this URL, or the thesis itself.

3: Commissioning, Design & Distribution, with a particular focus on the MOI and the first posters produced

This chapter focuses on the production and distribution of government publicity in the Second World War. The Ministry of Information (MOI) was expected to be the central governmental publicity machine, an institution that sought to regulate its population through discourse. In this chapter we briefly consider its formation and role, including how it drew on previous experience, and gained the power to influence British propaganda, but concentrate more explicitly on the publicity producing divisions. Within this chapter, we reflect upon how the MOI looked to promote self-regulation amongst British subjects, providing them with information, in order to produce what Foucault would term ‘docile’, ‘useful’, ‘functional’ and ‘productive’ bodies contributing to the British war effort. Having seen how the MOI generally worked, and the place of the poster division within that, we will move on to consider how the division commissioned, produced, distributed and displayed posters throughout the war, focusing particularly on the posters produced in the first few weeks of the war.

70 Years Since the Outbreak of the Second World War

So, here we are, September 3rd, 2009, 70 years after the Second World War was officially declared…  Some of the stories that have caught my attention:

• Guardian: Why did the Second World War begin?
• Terry Teachout: The War That Never Ends
• Poland/UK 70th Anniversary Ceremony
• The Daily Mirror looks back to its front cover in 1939, and compares the fight to the current one in Afghanistan.
• History Today collects some memories, click for all posts related to the Second World War.
• Memories rescued from the tip in Kent.
• Second World War just not cricket for the British (Financial Times)
• Oxford Mail: Looking Back on the Second World War.
• Canadian Survey: memories of World War II
• World War II in the Guardian series/logo.
• Propaganda Posters from Powys during the Second World War. (I’m sure these images are the ones from the free copies circulated by the Telegraph or some such in the 1970s!)
• Memories of Second World War put on Houghton Heritage website.

And the Ministry of Information was Formed, with Lord Macmillan the First Minister of Information appointed on 4th September 2009:

Extract from PhD thesis. © Rebecca Lewis, 2004 (The 3rd chapter goes into far more detail) Please note that this information is COPYRIGHTED, so please reference this URL, or the thesis itself.

Sidney ‘George’ Strube (b.1891; d.1956)

Born in Bishopsgate, London, Strube first worked as a draughtsman for a furniture company before joining a small advertising agency. He studied at the John Hassal Art School after which he began producing cartoons. He sold his first work to the Conservative and Unionist magazine in 1909, soon after which he began producing a weekly cartoon for Throne and Country. From 1912 to 1948 Strube was the Daily Express’s editorial cartoonist. For many of those years, the paper had the largest circulation in the world, and Strube became the most popular cartoonist of the inter-war period. He ridiculed the Nazis and thus found the Daily Express being banned in the nineteen-thirties in Germany, and himself of their hitlist during the Second World War. Strube was a notable member of the London Sketch Club in the 1930s.

Information taken from: ‘Political Cartoon Society’, http://www.politicalcartoon.co.uk/html/exhibition.html, Accessed 16 August 2002, and ‘Sidney Strube’, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jstrube.htm, Accessed 16 August 2002; Farman, J., ‘galleryonthegreen.co.uk’,http://www.galleryonthegreen.co.uk/mainfiles/sketch/history.htm, accessed October 03 2003. See alsohttp://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000264.php, accessed 28 January 2005.

Related Texts:

• Benson, T., Strube: The World’s Most Popular Cartoonist, 2004
• Political Cartoon Society Sidney Strube Exhibition (2004-5)