Nearly 60 years later, Stuart Manley, the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, was sorting through a box of dusty old books that he’d bought at auction when he found a folded up piece of paper at the bottom. It appears on everything from to tea cups to tea towels, but the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was almost lost and forgotten until it was rediscovered by the owner of a second-hand bookstore in northern England.ĭesigned by the Ministry of Information in 1939, the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was part of a series of propaganda posters to strengthen morale on the home front during the Second World War.Īlmost 2.5 million copies were printed, but the poster was held in reserve, to be issued only if Germany invaded Britain.Īs a result, most people never saw the poster during the war, and the majority of copies were pulped after it ended in 1945.
