We were really pleased to read this article on the BBC today - it helped spread the message to a wide audience... and the soothing message should be shared!
Here is the link to an excellent article written by Stuart Hughes
And here is our favorite bits, for you so you don’t need to jump across:
“Millions of copies of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster were printed on the eve of World War II, but never displayed. Now the message has taken on a new lease of life in our troubled peacetime.
The simple five-word message is the very model of British restraint and stiff upper lip. Keep calm and carry on.
In 1939, with war against Germany looming, the Government designed three posters to steady the public’s resolve and maintain morale. These featured the crown of King George VI set against a bold red background, and three distinctive slogans - “Freedom is in Peril”, “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory”, and “Keep Calm and Carry On”.
The message was all but forgotten until 2000, when a copy was discovered in a box of books bought at auction by Stuart Manley, a bookseller from Northumberland.
“I didn’t know anything about it but I showed it to my wife. We both liked it so we decided to frame it and put it in the shop,” explains Mr Manley.
“Lots of people saw it and wanted to buy it. We refused all offers but eventually we decided we should get copies made for sale.”
The poster was just one of hundreds produced by the Ministry of Information during the war to influence public opinion.
“The poster was a major medium in a way that it isn’t now,” says Professor Jim Aulich, an expert in propaganda art at Manchester Metropolitan University.
“It wasn’t competing with television. It was one of the main ways of reaching people, through billboards and on public transport.”
Rescued from obscurity after 70 years, the Ministry of Information’s appeal for calm has risen to cult status. Mr Manley’s store, Barter Books in Alnwick, receives an average of 1,000 orders a month from around the world. Customers include 10 Downing Street and assorted embassies. The design has been reproduced on T-shirts and coffee mugs, shopping bags and cufflinks.
It has also spawned imitators. One company has given it a twist, replacing the original slogan with “Now Panic and Freak Out”
To some, the world in 2009 seems as uncertain as it was in 1939, even if modern-day anxieties focus on redundancy and recession rather than bombs and the Blitz. Perhaps this is why the message still seems so relevant.
Of course, it might be difficult for the current government to come up with a poster with quite the same appeal during this time of economic stress. Context is everything, says social psychologist Dr Lesley Prince.
“If the government is in tune with you, you will listen. If you think the government is working on your behalf, you will listen.”
This was indisputably the case during WWII, but is less clear-cut even in the most troubled period of peacetime.
And a message of such powerful simplicity might not be so forthcoming these days. Today’s government posters attempt to convince the public of an unappreciated danger and get them to modify their behaviour. The “Keep Calm” poster is merely an injunction to think another way and continue acting as you have always acted.
People are drawn to the calming Britishness of the message, says Mr Manley.
“It’s interesting to look at the kind of places we often sell to; doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, schools and government departments. It seems to strike a chord anywhere that works at a hectic pace.”