Keep Calm and Carry On and other Second World War Posters — Keep Calm and Carry On and other Second World War Posters

Pride of Place @timeshighered

drbexl — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 22:42:57 +0000

The British landscape and representations of it in art give rise to a happy patriotic glow in many people. Fred Inglis shares that fervour

Is it still possible to claim oneself, in polite academic company, to be a patriot? Both the present and the previous prime ministers have gestured, a bit apologetically but I think sincerely, towards such a frame of mind for themselves and even for their parties. Everyone is at pains to dissociate themselves, of course, from the more horrible forms of chauvinism as displayed by the British National Party, but a mild form of non-aggressive nationalism is common in Scotland and Wales, much qualified in the North by the failures and disgrace of the national banks. Explicit and boisterous patriotism is pretty well confined to sport, as witness all those cars flying the cross of St George during the recent Fifa World Cup.

Patriotism is not, absolutely not, a configuration of emotions and thoughts to be measured by attitude survey. It is too submarine and inarticulate in Britain to command a sufficient rhetoric for colloquial expression. Even at high-water moments of history – 1914, 1940 – patriotic language tended, as George Orwell pointed out 70 years ago, to commemorate defeats and to be undercut by the truculent bawdy of the marching songs as well as by brutal scepticism.

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Scrap the Census?! Why?!

drbexl — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:27:28 +0000

Historians are queuing up to criticise “crazy and short-sighted” government plans to abolish the National Census after 2011, citing both their own research and wider concerns about the loss of cultural heritage.

Matt Houlbrook, tutorial Fellow in modern British history at Magdalen College, Oxford, is using census records to research the confidence trickster, journalist and royal biographer Netley Lucas.

The proposal risked wiping ordinary people from history, Dr Houlbrook said. “The idea of scrapping the National Census is crazy and short-sighted. It’s the demotic – almost democratic – qualities of the census that make it such an important source of information about even the most obscure and long-forgotten individuals.

“Its records provide us with the traces of everyman and everywoman in the past, rather than just the rich and the powerful. Scrapping the National Census risks silencing such voices for generations of family and academic historians to come.”

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Style Points @timeshighered

drbexl — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:04:50 +0000

Few scholarly works can communicate with non-specialists, if they even attempt to. But academics in all fields may need to make their writing more accessible to satisfy demands for impact and interdisciplinarity. Matthew Reisz considers the obfuscatory malaise and how to beat it

It is widely agreed, by both insiders and outsiders, that something has gone wrong with much academic writing.

A great deal of it, says Anthony Haynes, the author of Writing Successful Academic Books and visiting professor at both Beijing Normal and Hiroshima universities, is ruined by “a kind of learned inability. No one is born writing sentences laden with adverbs.”

John Cornwell, director of the Science and Human Dimension Project based at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a journalist and written a number of best-selling books about the papacy. He is firmly committed to the value of academic rigour and believes that “there are aspects of academic work and publishing that aren’t for a wider readership, but still need to be done”. Yet he also believes that “much academic writing suffers from rigor mortis”.

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History Sucks Online

drbexl — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:53:07 +0000

The plight of the “digital humanities” – the integration of technology into the humanities – was tackled in an unflinching speech at an international conference.

Melissa Terras, senior lecturer in electronic communication at University College London, described her keynote speech at the Digital Humanities Conference last week as “necessarily negative”, warning that, as a discipline, “our web presence … sucks”.

Reciting a story about the corpse of UCL’s spiritual father, Jeremy Bentham, being wheeled into senate meetings at the institution and listed in the minutes as “present, not voting”, she told delegates if the digital humanities did not improve its standing online, it too risked being “present, not voting” within the academy.

Writing in Code (@annmroz)

drbexl — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:48:48 +0000

Librarians at one North American university have posted on the internet a guide to help students distinguish a scholarly journal from a popular one. Among the telltale signs of populist offerings are high production values – “slick, glossy, with colour pictures, photographs, and illustrations” – and writing that is “non-technical” and uses “simple vocabulary accessible to the majority of readers”; whereas textual material in a journal is described as “college level, in the specialized vocabulary of the discipline covered”.

That’s akin to saying that scholarly articles are written in code for those in the know; they are more exclusionary than inclusionary. There is a widespread belief that any work that is easily understood by a non-specialist must have been dumbed down. References and footnotes therefore swaddle the text like an intellectual security blanket and deter the curious reader.

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Donald Zec, Don’t lose it again! The life and war-time cartoons of Philip Zec, 2005

drbexl — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:54:53 +0000

Philip Zec is now widely regarded as the most important political cartoonist of World War Two. From 1939 to 1945 he produced 1529 cartoons for the Daily Mirror which caught brilliantly the defiance of the British people at war. Some of his finest drawings are reproduced in these pages. Two cartoons made history: the first, the notorious ‘seaman on the raft’ cartoon was astonishingly misinterpreted in Downing Street and led to a furious debate in Parliament: the second, a moving evocation of the folly of war gives the book its title and marks the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day on 8th of May. Written by the cartoonist’ss brother Donald, the award-wining journalist and author, Don’t Lose It Again hallmarks a unique talent which contributed significantly to the British war effort. This book is probably the most incisive biography of a political cartoonist since Sir David Low’s own autobiography 49 years ago

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Review by Dr Bex Lewis (2005-6)

Philip Zec, designer of the poster ‘Women of Britain, Come Into the Factories‘, did not see himself as a propagandist, rather as an observer, although he was happy for his work to be used as propaganda. His brother Donald, well known as a (film) journalist/ biographer, writes this engaging text, not as a brother, but as one who recognised the importance of Zec’s work.

The commissioning of the book was triggered by Dr Tim Benson’s (Political Cartoon Society) purchase of Zec’s iconic cartoon, published in celebration of VE Day: ‘Victory and Peace In Europe: Don’t Lose it Again’.

Despite the fact that Zec destroyed most of his original images because he didn’t think they were good enough, the book is well illustrated, largely in black and white. The images, most from the Second World War (or shortly before), are clearly contextualised. Both the book and the images present the Second World War through the eyes of gifted observers, with Philip Zec clearly contributing to the ‘mythical memory’ of the Second World War through powerful and memorable images.

An enjoyable, highly illustrated read – the book follows Zec’s beginnings on the edges of Bloomsbury, his training at St Martin’s College of Art, his move into advertising illustration, and his friendships with Strube, Low and the columnist Cassandra on the Daily Mirror. As a socialist and a Jew, Zec had strong political and social awareness – he was drawn into political cartooning as it was evident the country was on the brink of war (he could not stay on the sidelines drawing goods for sale). Soon after the war commenced, Zec produced the first of a series of cartoons for the Daily Mirror, poking fun at the Dictators (putting himself on Hitler’s blacklist). Zec was not a ‘funny’ cartoonist, producing strong messages, unafraid to shock, although he found the realities of the German concentration camps too shocking to convert into cartoons. Zec was loved by ‘the boys’ in the Armed Forces, and raised controversy with Churchill (see pp.74-81). Post-war, he threw his support behind the Labour Party, continuing his work as a political cartoonist until his death in 1983.

Max Arthur, Forgotten Voices of the Second World War: A New History of World War Two in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There, Ebury Press, 2004

drbexl — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:51:19 +0000

“The Imperial War Museum holds a vast archive of interviews with soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians of most nationalities who saw action during WW2. As in the highly acclaimed “Forgotten Voices of the Great War”, Max Arthur and his team of researchers will spend hundreds of hours digging deep into this unique archive, uncovering tapes, many of which have not been listened to since they were created in the early 1970s. The result will be the first complete aural history of the war. We hear at first from British, German and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians. Accounts of the impact of the U. S. involvement after Pearl Harbour and the major effects that had on the war in Europe and the Far East is chronicled in startling detail, including compelling interviews from U. S. and British troops who fought against the Japanese. Continuing through from D-Day, to the Rhine Crossing and the dropping of the Atom Bomb in August 1945, this book is a unique testimony to one of the world’s most dreadful conflicts. One of the hallmarks of Max Arthur’s work is the way he involves those left behind on the home front as well as those working in factories or essential services. Their voices will not be neglected.”

Battle of Britain: Roll of Honour

drbexl — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:46:17 +0000

“These pages catalogue the official reports of the most important event in Royal Air Force history, the Battle fought over Britain between the 10th July and 31st October 1940. For the first time, the complete Fighter Command Operational Diaries for the period have been published in full, day by day over the whole period the Battle. Supporting this official text are a series of pages detailing such facets of the Battle as the Commanders, the Aircraft and the changes in Tactics on both sides as the situation developed. Although some of the Fighter Command claims of the time (I.e. numbers of German aircraft shot down etc.) have since been provd to be greatly exagerated on some days, it nevertheless does give a unique insight into the RAF’s perspective of the Battle of Britain.” Visit site.

Have Peace and Be Still

drbexl — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:14:07 +0000

A great find from Craig Gilman, from @ulfilas

Zemen, Z. Selling the War: Art and Propaganda in World War II London: Orbis, 1978

drbexl — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:43:48 +0000

A general work, with a substantial section upon British propaganda. Very heavily illustrated, in fact the images almost overpower the text, but the text is quite ‘learned’ and includes many important details, such as the significance of some of the images contained in the posters, including flags. Posters are compared with other types of propaganda, not simply left to stand alone.