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.

• 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!)

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!

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 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!

“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.”

So, a part of my thesis is finally published… my book is still in the planning stages, and the website: http://www.ww2poster.co.uk/ needs a distinct overhaul and I am throwing around ideas for an associated blog, but I’m not there yet! In the meantime, I’ve been quoted in the national press in relation to a story which now I’ve done a bit of a hunt, appears to have been circulating for some time, re the discovery of the unpublished Second World War posters ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ ten years ago by Barter Books, and it’s continued surprise success (although with my love of wartime posters I don’t find the idea that people love posters surprising, it is surprising that such a generally non-visual design is popular, but the slogan is very strong, and very apt in the present times)!

PhD Findings
My PhD ‘The Planning, Design and Reception of British Home Front Propaganda Posters of the Second World War’ was awarded (without corrections) in June 2004 by what is now the University of Winchester.

A section from pages 104-5 of my thesis (copy held in the Imperial War Museum, and in the RKE Centre at the University of Winchester):

The poster with a proclamation from the King was to be ‘plastered everywhere in order to drive the contents into everyone’s head’.[1] By August 1939 war was regarded as inevitable, and by 9 August the finished drawings were submitted to Macadam for final approval. Any adaptations to proportions would then be made and the posters printed.[2] By 23 August the proportions to be printed were decided. The percentages were: ‘Freedom is in Peril’ (for remote areas), 12% (figure 22); ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’, 65%; and ‘Your Courage, etc.’, 23% (figure 1).[3] The Treasury had approved costs for a single poster, three designs were produced, exceeding estimates by under £50. “Our Fighting Men Depend on You” for factories, works, docks and harbours, was also printed, for which no allowance had originally been made.[4] By September, ‘Your Courage’ and ‘Freedom is in Peril’ were already being posted throughout the country. ‘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. Soon after war was declared, the small poster ‘Don’t Help the Enemy, Careless Talk may give away vital secrets’ (figure 62) was approved by the War Office and was ready to put into production. 58,000 copies had already been distributed by September 17, and 75,000 copies were to be despatched daily from September 26.[5] By the end of September 1939, roughs for further designs had been prepared and approved, including messages from the King and the Queen, designs specifically for factories and docks, and designs specifically for each branch of the armed services: reassurance, not recruiting, posters.[6]

[1] PRO INF 1/10, ‘Functions and Organisation of the Ministry. Memorandum by E.B. Morgan’, early 1939.
[2] PRO INF 1/266, ‘Memo from Vaughan to Macadam’, August 9 1939.
[3] PRO INF 1/226, ‘Letter from Macadam to W.G.V. Vaughan’, August 23 1939. In the same folder, ‘Demand for Printing Slip for HMSO’, August 31 1939, and ‘Poster Campaign: Distribution’, November 1 1940, give details of the exact quantities ordered on August 31 1939, in a variety of sizes and in both broadside and upright versions, and where distributed. PRO INF 1/302, ‘Summary of Activities of Home Publicity Division’, September 28 1939 notes that all sizes were included, from 20ft. by 10ft. down to 15” x 10”.
[4] PRO INF 1/226, ‘Letter from I.S.Macadam, MOI to E.Rowe-Dutton, Treasury’, September 4 1939.
[5] PRO INF 1/6, ‘First Report on the Activities of the Ministry of Information from September 3 to September 17 1939’, September 1939.
[6] PRO INF 1/302, ‘Summary of Activities of Home Publicity Division’, September 28 1939.

I have lots more I could say, and hope to be back with some more considered comments, summarising elements of my PhD, before I get round to the book!

Some Links:

• Stories
  Simon Edge, ‘Sign of the Times’, Daily Express, 19th March 2009 (not online)
• Jon Henley, ‘What Crisis?’, The Guardian, 18th March 2009
• Jess Cartner-Morley, ‘Women of Britain – your designers need you!’, 28th February 2009
• ‘Keep Calm and Put Your Poster Up’, Guardian Picture Gallery (not the subverted design!)
• Jane Fryer, ‘Exquisitely understated, utterly inspiring, the wartime poster striking a chord in our credit-crunch times’, Daily Mail, 19th March 2009
• Stuart Hughes, ”The greatest motivational poster ever?’, BBC News, 4 February 2009
• ‘Bookseller discovers rare wartime Keep Calm and Carry On poster’, Telegraph, 23 February 2009
• I’m trying to identify a story I saw the other week, regarding temporarily taking on less hours to secure a job, as this poster was on the pictured employees desk…
• Products
• Barter Books: the ‘Keep Calm’ range (Mary’s blog entry on the success of their find, the history (taken from my site))
• The competition, obliquely referred to by Barter Books.
• Retro to Go: Keep Calm
• Keep Calm: Rugs

(Originally published 19th March 2009 on blogger)