In 2011, the poster even became the subject of a trademark dispute after a European ruling allowed an English businessman to trademark the phrase. ![]() “We thought it was a bit of fun and that after a while it would die down,” Manley told The Independent. The BBC even asked if it was “the greatest motivational poster ever”, describing the simple five-word message as “the very model of British restraint and stiff upper lip”. Then in 2009, as the global economic crisis took hold, the poster started to appear on everything from T-shirts to mugs and became the inspiration for countless parodies and memes. “Our website broke down under the strain, the phone never stopped ringing and virtually every member of staff had to be diverted to packing posters.” ![]() “All hell broke loose,” Manley told the BBC. Manley told The T elegraph in Britain : “I thought, we’ll sell them eventually.” But after the poster appeared in The Guardian’s 10 Favourite Things list in December 2005, Manley sold 9,000 in a month. We thought we’d just hold onto the rest for as long as it took to flog them, but within a year they’d sold out.” But the printer said it wasn’t worth it: “We had about 50 copies in mind, but 500 was the printer’s minimum. Instead, Manley confirmed that the design was out of copyright and decided to make 50 copies. A number of customers wanted to buy it, but we refused to sell.” “As soon as we put it up, people started commenting. “It had a really nice feeling about it,” Manley told The Independent. It was the year 2000, and the couple hung their copy of the poster behind the cash register in their second-hand bookstore in an old railway station in the far north of England. So we framed it and put it up on the bookshop wall. “I opened it out, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s quite something,’” he said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in Britain. 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.
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