Information at War: A Communication History of the Ministry of Information 1939-1946

The short-lived Ministry of Information (MoI, 1939-1946) had an outsized impact.It played a key role in the allied war effort, and its work has reverberated in British culture ever since, from its much darker version (as the 'Ministry of Truth') in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to memes based on the slogan 'Keep Calm and Carry On'.But despite its long legacy, it has been the subject of limited scholarly investigation. This multi-authored volume corrects this by offering the first comprehensive and global history of the MoI, which introduced something new to British society: the idea of a formal state mechanism to issue and control information.In consequence it was an inherently ambivalent institution: its negative side (the threat of an un-British level of state control) could be offset by the MoI's perceived ability to generate a sense of national purpose at a time of crisis.The remit of the MoI extended far beyond war-time propaganda and the home front, and the book demonstrates the