What was keep calm and carry on

Since then, more have been found, but there are still very few surviving original copies from the print in It is thought that the rest may have been destroyed towards the end of the war in in the paper salvage that was taking place. The meaning behind the slogan is why it is loved so much. It is straight and to the point, meaning exactly what it says. It is a phrase that still rings true today for many Brits, hence why the phrase has been embraced so much after its rediscovery in the s.

Britain is full of rich history, from Roman and Viking invasions to their part in world wars. Britain has had a massive role in the shaping of the world, all from the island in the north. In late after the outbreak of the war, the MOI was appointed by the British Government to design a number of morale boosting posters that would be displayed across the British Isles during the testing times that lay ahead.

With a bold coloured background, the posters were required to be similar in style and feature the symbolic crown of King George VI along with a simple yet effective font.

These two were posted on public transport, in shop windows, upon notice boards and hoardings across Britain. It was first used on a British propaganda poster during World War II but now enjoys general currency as an expression of resilience. The third, and now iconic, poster flashed Keep Calm and Carry On in white, capital letters underneath an image of a crown on a bright, grabbingly red background.

Who, exactly, coined the slogan is unclear. The British government printed nearly 2. It never did display the posters, and most were recycled in during a wartime paper shortage. The Keep Calm and Carry On poster languished in number and obscurity until Stuart Manley discovered a copy in tucked away in a box of old books for his bookshop, Barter Books, in Alnwick, England.

His wife and co-owner, Mary, framed and displayed the poster. Patrons fell in love with it, and the booksellers printed tens of thousands of copies over the decade.

The poster skyrocketed in popularity after the recession, explained Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jon Henley in for The Guardian. This is familiar territory. There is a whole micro-industry of austerity nostalgia aimed straight at the stomach.

Other versions of this are more luxurious, such as Dinner, where Heston Blumenthal provides typically quirky English food as part of the attractions of One Hyde Park, the most expensive housing development on Earth. The interior design is clearly part of the appeal, offering a strange, luxurious version of a works canteen, with benches, trays and sans serif signs that aim to be both modernist and nostalgic. Still more bizarre is Albion, a greengrocer for oligarchs, selling traditional English produce to the denizens of Neo Bankside , the Richard Rogers -designed towers alongside Tate Modern.

Closer to reality as lived by most people is a mobile app called the Ration Book. The plate-making company, People Will Always Need Plates , has made a name for itself with its towels, mugs, plates and badges emblazoned with various British modernist buildings from the s to the s, elegantly redrawn in a bold, schematic form that sidesteps the often rather shabby reality of the buildings. By recreating the image of the historically untainted building, it manages to precisely reverse the original modernist ethos.

If for Adolf Loos and generations of modernist architects ornament was crime, here modernist buildings are made into ornaments.

Still, the choice of buildings is politically interesting. Blocks of s collective housing, s council flats, interwar London Underground stations — exactly the sort of architectural projects now considered obsolete in favour of retail and property speculation.

Many of the buildings immortalised in these plates have been the subject of direct transfers of assets from the public sector into the private. The reclamation of postwar modernist architecture by the intelligentsia has been a contributory factor in the privatisation of social housing. Another favourite on mugs and tea towels is Balfron Tower, a council tower block about to be sold to wealthy investors for its iconic quality.

It is here, where the rage for 21st-century austerity chic meets the results of austerity as practised in the s and s, that a mildly creepy fad spills over into much darker territory. In aiding the sell-off of one of the greatest achievements of that era — the housing built by a universal welfare state — the revival of austerity chic is the literal destruction of the thing it claims to love.

Keep Calm and Carry On — the sinister message behind the slogan that seduced the nation. Keep Calm and Carry On: The secret history.