Keep Calm and Carry On and other Second World War Posters
British Home Front Propaganda Posters of the Second World War
“Barter Books wish to make it clear that Mark Coop has no ethical or moral right to ‘Keep Calm’. The reverse – when he first jumped on the band-wagon, six years after it was first put on sale, and two years after the Guardian feature and subsequent TV that started the worldwide spread, it was already well established. We have records showing when he first bought a poster from us prior to starting his ‘business’ and his written admission that he used that image, after removing our name, without either asking or acknowledging his source. He even took our history of the poster, which is our copyright, without acknowledging either ourselves or Dr Bex Lewis, whose dissertation was the prime source. (Subsequent correspondence got him to at least acknowledge Dr Bex!)
By the time he formed the company ‘Keep Calm and Carry On Ltd.’ and subsequently got an EU trade mark for the phrase, it was already in use by literally hundreds of other people (many kind enough to acknowledge their source!) and this trade mark should never have been allowed.”
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Talking to Linda Barker, I appear for about, ooo, 10 seconds, and then again a bit later in the programme! A lot of the information from my PhD also makes its way into the words coming from Linda Barker’s mouth… and there’s a few ways that things have been interpreted that I might take issue with, but that’s the way TV programmes get made! The t-shirt is from Barter Books.
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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?)
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!
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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).
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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:
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!
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“For many the wartime slogans, such as Dig for Victory, Careless Talk Costs Lives, and Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases, have never been forgotten. Such slogans have been passed on as a part of our common heritage,” says Dr Rebecca Lewis, a historian who has made a study of the subject. “Posters that were not published or were withdrawn also make for interesting study, particularly for reasons as to why they were rejected,” she adds. “However, there do not seem to be many examples of these, although whether this is because records of unsuccessful designs were not kept or because there were not many was not established.”
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