‘Show it only to your intimate friends’: circulating propaganda behind enemy lines
Document of the month: FO 898/449/259 Guy Woodward on the reception of propaganda leaflets in enemy and occupied Europe Most of our…
THE POLITICAL WARFARE EXECUTIVE, COVERT PROPAGANDA, AND BRITISH CULTURE
Brexit and the wartime ‘Projection of Britain’
Document of the month: FO 898/413 Guy Woodward finds echoes of current political debates in the PWE archive Since the referendum…
‘The celestial city is as real as any swamp’: Freya Stark in the Middle East
Document of the month: FO 898/114 Guy Woodward traces Freya Stark’s involvement in wartime propaganda This memorandum appears in file FO 898/114,…
Masters of Deceit: Introducing #SparkQuoteoftheWeek
Beatriz Lopez introduces a new series exploring Muriel Spark’s fictions of deception Most critics have identified The Hothouse by the East River (1973)…
Muriel Spark and plausibility
Beatriz Lopez finds traces of Spark’s wartime service in the PWE in two novels deeply concerned with the appearance of truth…
Letters in bottles and leaky U-boats: Ian Fleming’s ideas factory
Document of the month: FO 898/6/64-5 Guy Woodward traces the involvement of the creator of 007 in covert wartime propaganda This…
“Peace on earth, but only when Hitler is smashed”: Christmas wartime propaganda
Document of the month: FO 898/311/330-1 Guy Woodward on propaganda and the festive season Supposedly a time of peace and goodwill,…
John Betjeman’s Dublin whispers
Document of the month: FO 898/70/475-6 Guy Woodward investigates poet John Betjeman’s role in spreading rumours in neutral Ireland during the…
Poisoned sweetmeats: introducing #siboftheweek
Guy Woodward on the PWE’s production of rumours during the Second World War Imagine the scene: a bar in neutral Lisbon,…
The Political Warfare Executive – what’s in a (cover) name?
Principal Investigator James Smith on Whitehall secrecy and the names used to conceal PWE operations One of the initial issues that this…
