This book examines the evolution of British propaganda practice during the course of the twentieth century. Written by an internationally-renowned expert in the area, this book covers the period from the First World War to the present day, including discussions of recent developments in information warfare. It includes analysis of film, radio, television and the press, and places the British experience within the wider international context. Drawing together elements of the author's previously published work, the book demonstrates how Britain has established a model for democratic propaganda world-wide.This is the first volume in the new International Communications series, edited by Philip M Taylor.

A detailed study of the NWAC's activities, propaganda and reception. It demonstrates the significant role played by the NWAC in British society after July 1917, illuminating the local network of agents and committees which conducted its operations and the party political motivations behind these.

John Jenks digs into the archives to give a detailed account of British media discourse, news manipulation and propaganda in the early Cold War.

In order to provide a better understanding of the shifting nature of influence, this volume looks at how the British government employed various forms of persuasion to achieve its goals across the twentieth century. The collection provides a range of case studies to assess how effectively - or ineffectively - influence was brought to bear on an array of non-western societies. This volume will be of interest not only to historians, but to anyone interested in the operation of influence as a foreign policy tool.

Though often defined as having opposite aims, means, and effects, modernism and modern propaganda developed at the same time and influenced each other in surprising ways. The professional propagandist emerged as one kind of information specialist, the modernist writer as another. Britain was particularly important to this double history. By secretly hiring well-known writers and intellectuals to write for the government and by exploiting their control of new global information systems, the British in World War I invented a new template for the manipulation of information that remains with us to this day. Making a persuasive case for the importance of understanding modernism in the context of the history of modern propaganda, Modernism, Media, and Propaganda also helps explain the origins of today's highly propagandized world. Modernism, Media, and Propaganda integrates new archival research with fresh interpretations of British fiction and film to provide a comprehensive cultural history of the relationship between modernism and propaganda in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. From works by Joseph Conrad to propaganda films by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, Mark Wollaeger traces the transition from literary to cinematic propaganda while offering compelling close readings of major fiction by Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce.

The systematic use of propaganda is very much a phenomenon of the 20th century. Through the years, kings, political leaders, and statesmen have often made use of what might now be called "propaganda tech niques" but it is only within the present century that the use of pro paganda has been developed as a systematic instrument of national and foreign policy. Nonetheless, since World War II propaganda has become a regular peacetime instrument of foreign policy for most states, be they large or small. While some considerable attention has been given to the propaganda organisations and activities of the United States and certain Com munist nations, especially the U.S.S.R., relatively little has been done on the British approach to propaganda. The present study attempts to at least partially fill that vacuum. A history of the overseas Informa tion Services is not undertaken and I will leave that important task to future scholars. Instead I have examined the British approach to the organisation of propaganda and the mechanics they have developed to utilize this instrument of foreign policy.

In 1914, advertising was much less sophisticated that it is today, radio was in its infancy, television was undeveloped, telephones were just coming into use, the gargantuan party rallies of Hitler or Mussolini were still in the future, and the idea of using ocmmunications media to control the thoughts of an entire population was new, relatively unexplored, and not of interest to governments to any great extent. Propaganda was a part of life before 1914, and the term was coming into increasingly widespread usage. But other institutions of society, such as the church, the press, business, political parties, and philanthropy, were the major producers - not government.

Britain's Secret Propaganda War is the first book to be written about The Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) -- an important chapter in the history of the Cold War. The narrative is driven by actual accounts of IRD covert operations and includes a number of "exclusives." The IRD was set up under the Labour Government in 1948 and clandestinely financed from the Secret Intelligence Service budget. A large organisation with close links to MI6 -- with whom it shared many personnel -- it waged a vigorous covert propaganda campaign against Eastern Bloc Communism for nearly thirty years using journalists, politicians, academics and trade unionists -none of whom were "unwitting." Such famous names as George Orwell, Denis Healey, Stephen Spender, Bertrand Russell and Guy Burgess helped or backed the work of IRD.

The relationship of art to politics has always been an uneasy one, and never more so than in the 20th century. Governments have sought to control, censor, or bend art to their own purposes; artists have resisted and subverted such efforts. But what happens when artists work on behalf of a political program? When does art become propaganda? Is art tainted, diminished, or elevated by its political content?Toby Clark argues that propaganda art appears in many guises, and that the desire to persuade is not always at odds with aesthetic aims. He examines these many forms: the state propaganda of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Stalin's Soviet Union; democratic governments' representation of enemies in wartime; and anti-government protest art around the world, uncovering the complex rhetoric, high beauty, and ambiguous role of art that dwells in the political realm.

As Philip Taylor has written, 'The challenge (of the modern information age) is to ensure that no single propaganda source gains monopoly over the information and images that shape our thoughts. If this happens, the war propagandists will be back in business again.' Propaganda came of age in the Twentieth Century. The development of mass- and multi-media offered a fertile ground for propaganda while global conflict provided the impetus needed for its growth. Propaganda has however become a portmanteau word, which can be interpreted in a number of different ways. What are the characteristic features of propaganda, and how can it be defined? The distinguished contributors to this book trace the development of techniques of 'opinion management' from the First World War to the current conflict in Afghanistan. They reveal how state leaders and spin-doctors operating at the behest of the state, sought to shape popular attitudes - at home and overseas - endeavouring to harness new media with the objective of winning hearts and minds. The book provides compelling evidence of how the study and practice of propaganda today is shaped by its history.