The history of 'Keep Calm and Carry On' is peculiar and complicated and, like so many examples of the best history (and the best science), doesn't quite confirm our settled notions or convenient assumptions,' said Professor Simon Eliot, the project’s principal investigator. It is run in collaboration with the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London and the National Archives at Kew. The project, Make Do and Mend: a publishing and communication history of the Ministry of Information, 1939-45, is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the ‘Keep Calm’ slogan, the Institute of English Studies, a member institute of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, is undertaking a £782,410 four-year research project to reveal its secret history. Relatively little was known about the Ministry of Information, which was located in the University of London’s headquarters at Senate House, but that is now changing. It wasn’t until a copy was discovered in a bookshop in Northumberland in 2000, and reproductions of it began to be sold a year later, that its fame was established. The ‘Keep Calm’ design was never officially issued and only a very small number of originals have survived to the present day.Ģ.45 million posters displaying it were printed, only to be pulped and recycled in 1940 to help the British government deal with a serious paper shortage. It was one of a series of three posters that would be issued in the event of war (the others read ‘Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory’ and ‘Freedom is in Peril Defend it with all Your Might’). The now-ubiquitous ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ phrase was chosen for its clear message of ‘sober restraint’ and was coined by the shadow Ministry of Information at some point between 27 June and 6 July 1939.

‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ was one of three key messages created by Britain’s wartime propaganda department, the Ministry of Information, made famous as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It’s hard to believe that a wartime slogan from 1939, which was never seen by the public, has re-emerged 75 years later and is being used to sell everything from mugs to flight bags and baby clothes.

Keep calm and carry on png