The Projection of Britain
British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919–1939

This book traces the origins and early development of what are today loosely termed Britain's Overseas Information Services.

Philip M. Taylor (Author)

9780521046411, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 December 2007

380 pages
21.5 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.501 kg

This book traces the origins and early development of what are today loosely termed Britain's Overseas Information Services. It examines how, at the end of the First World War, the British government came to forfeit the considerable lead it had established in propaganda since 1914, and the reasons why it had gradually to re-enter the field during the inter-war years as a direct response to totalitarianism. It surveys the pioneering work of the Foreign Office News Department and its important press office, the commercial propaganda conducted by the Empire Marketing Board and the Travel Association, the foundation and rapid peacetime growth of the British Council to conduct 'cultural diplomacy', and the beginning of the BBC's World Service with the inauguration of foreign-language broadcasts in 1938.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I. Publicity and Diplomacy, 1919–1939: 1. The Foreign Office and the press
2. The Foreign Office and propaganda abroad
Part II. The Projection of Britain, 1919–1939: 3. Commercial propaganda and the concept of national projection
4. Cultural propaganda and the British Council
Part III. Psychological Rearmament, 1935–1939: 5. The BBC foreign-language broadcasts
6. The Vansittart Committee for the Co-ordination of British Publicity Abroad
7. Propaganda for war
Conclusion
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History [HB]