Keep Calm and Carry On Update

So, what’s been going on in the world of Keep Calm and Carry On, whilst we’ve been enjoying the halcyon days of British summer (and with all those tales of the recession coming to an end, has the popularity of the slogan taken a downturn?)

• Troops On Tour order the t-shirts
• A casting call for a production entitled “Keep Calm and Carry On” (deadline 28th September)
• Keep Calm and Sew Stuff (machine design) (made same mistake as me!)
• Vera Lynn quotes the poster, as her album hits No.1, decades after she recorded it.
• Card-carrying University of Illinois President B. Joseph White
• Motivational Slogans/World-War-II, hand-in-hand
• Lord Paul Myners (City Minister)
• In diamante!
• Necklaces
• Wayne Rooney listening to the Stereophonics “Keep Calm and Carry On” album (loves it, apparently)
• A reader comments that this converted church is like Barter Books…
• Stereophonics : Live (Listen to a track from their album)
• Keep Calm and Carry On Collecting (Nazi Relics)
• Keep Calm and Smell the Roses
• Keep Calm and Carry On Craze
• San Franciscans love it?
• Still saving from ‘freak out’ in the recession, but apparently also available as a pepper spray!
• Critique of the “police poster” series.
• Clutch Bag
• For Reading F.C.
• Derren Brown “remain calm”, made others think of KCCO!
• Effortless Anthropologie remembers it as a 2007 design issue…
• 1940s weekend, Norfolk
• Submitted to the “Snowclone” database (What’s a snowclone?)
• Remember the slogan when reading health articles!
• Advising expats from the US, living in the UK
• Graffitied onto a train
• An insult to those with depression
• ‘Making art and ignoring the dishes‘ (what a great slogan in its own right!)

Keep Calm and Carry On Apron

So, for a week in the Loire Valley, I cooked for 83 people on 4 gas burners (2 of which were rather temperamental), including a vegetarian option! Despite Marvin’s apron of Master Chef (:-)) I was Chief Cook on this trip – responsible for ensuring that the meal was ready roughly on time, enough to go round, and didn’t make anyone sick! Lots of responsibility, eh?

So, before I went, having left my trusty Stork apron at home (it’s all about advertising, baby!), I decided to get a KCCO apron from Barter Books, to remind us every time it looked like the plan wasn’t going to come together… and it always calmed us down, focused us on the task in hand, and we achieved it all! Got plenty of conversations going too, especially with regards to how it would translate from a Biblical perspective.

To the left: Marvin & I “serve up”    To the right: Liz & I chop up (she wasn’t freaked by the knife at all!)

Apron Review: The apron was good quality, with an extremely handy front pocket (I had it full of cooking notes, tin-openers, pens, etc. most of the week, washed/dried easily (but watch out for the red leakage to begin with), adjustable neck length, and long waist-band. Great!

Dr Bex Lewis in a Keep Calm and Carry On T-shirt

This morning I had this photo taken for another press release (after the NYT article) … we had some fun taking them – trying to make sure the slogan was on view! Nice, eh?! One of the first comments I had as I walked in was “ooo, I saw Katie Price wearing that the other day”, and it has generated quite a lot of other comments too – people are just so interested in it… I met a super-fan (Jas) at the Winchester Web Scene last night, who said that he owns most variations of it (that’s us having a chat in the background)!

Thanks to Tim Griffiths at the University of Winchester for the photo.

I purchased my t-shirt from Barter Books (only £12.60 +p&p).

Barter Books: The Home of the Original “Keep Calm and Carry On” Poster

I know people say I should be cashing in on the Keep Calm and Carry On craze, and I will be giving a couple of conference papers related to the subject this summer (and I’m planning on creating a more general-audience friendly paper too, so let me know if you’re be interested in that), but I’m more than happy to send all customers to Barter Books, who own one of only 2 original copies of this poster known to be in existence (if you know of another one, I’d be interested to know, although my budget wouldn’t stretch to buying one – currently saving up for the apron!), so they, and the owner of the other poster (I’m sure I’ve seen it at the IWM/National Archives, so maybe there’s more than 2), then own the copyright to those images (if not to the poster itself, which is now publicly available)!

Barter Books sell:

• Reproduction Posters
• T-Shirts
• Aprons & Tea Towels
• Mugs & Mouse-Mats
• Postcards, Book, Rubber Stamp (Note: This is the book for which I will shortly be hosting a competition, they’ll be 10 copies to win)

Read more in Journalive.co.uk (February 2009)

Thanks to Barter Books for acknowledging that their historical material comes from my PhD, actually, not my PhD, my undergraduate thesis. I have more information, which as I find it, will appear on this blog! I’m not affiliated with Barter Books, but we share a true interest in this poster! I’ve posted this in response to my Twitter feed, where I’d commented that this was the original home, and had a response that @ironyboy had visited the bookshop recently and had thought “pah, copycats”, so, just to clarify… the originators of the craze!