Keep Calm and Carry On
motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939
Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the Government of the United Kingdom in 1939 in preparation for World War II. The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities. Although 2.45 million copies were printed, and the Blitz did in fact take place, the poster was only rarely publicly displayed and was little-known until a copy was rediscovered in 2000 at Barter Books, a bookshop in Alnwick. It has since been re-issued by a number of private companies, and has been used as the decorative theme for a range of products.
Evocative of the Victorian belief in British stoicism — the "stiff upper lip", self-discipline, fortitude, and remaining calm in adversity — the poster has become recognised around the world. It was thought that only two original copies survived until a collection of approximately 15 was brought in to the Antiques Roadshow in 2012 by the daughter of an ex-Royal Observer Corps member. A few further examples have come to light since.
History
Design
During 1938, newspapers were sold with a "Keep Calm and Dig" poster. The Keep Calm and Carry On poster was designed by the Ministry of Information from 27 June to 6 July 1939. It was produced as one of three "Home Publicity" posters (the others read "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" and "Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might"). Each poster showed the slogan under a representation of a Tudor Crown (a symbol of the state).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Keep Calm and Carry On” as motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q633603. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2000, 2012 and 1938.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Keep Calm and Carry On” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.