Britain Can Take It

Fields of battle: UK government and public attitudes to sport in the second world war

“…Newspaper circulations rose -the daily figure for the national press from 9.9 million in 1937 to 15.4 million 10 years later ((HMSO, 1949) -and cinema audiences grew 58 per cent from 19 million in 1939 to more than 30 million in 1945 (Aldgate and Richards, 1994). The most significant increase, however, came in the radio audience.…”

Propaganda Music in Second World War Britain: John Ireland's Epic March

“…By 1942, as Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards explain, British film makers, responding to the public's growing dissatisfaction with war movies, were requesting permission from the MoI to make more non-war-themed films. 110 At the same time, what was an acceptable aesthetic for propaganda music remained a contentious subject that plagued popular music as much as it did art music. As Christina Baade has shown, 1942 also was the year in which a debate about the suitability of sentimental ballads for wartime Britain came to a head: a genre popular with many soldiers, but one that the authorities (not least the BBC's newly appointed Director of Music Arthur Bliss), encouraged by vociferous members of an older generation of servicemen, feared was fostering effeminacy.…”

Propaganda for Democracy: The Curious Case ofLove on the Dole

“…Whether or not Love on the Dole was deliberately commissioned as a trendsetter, it certainly paved the way for a number of egalitarian successors, all approved by the Ministry of Information: feature films also directed by John Baxter, including Let the People Sing (1942) and The Shipbuilders (1943), and a documentary short called The Dawn Guard (1941)-which Ealing Studios made for the Ministrywere among the films "imbued with the same vision of a 'brave new world' arising from the ruins of the old and of the war as the 'midwife of social progress.'" 67 As one of the characters in The Dawn Guard puts it: "We found out in this war how we were all neighbours, and we aren't going to forget it when it's all over. "…”