![]() ![]() The key words “Your Courage”, suggested by a civil servant named AP Waterfield, were regarded as potentially the most effective as “a rallying war cry that will bring out the best in every one of us and put us in an offensive mood at once”. The others read “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory” and “Freedom Is in Peril. The Keep Calm design was the least popular of a series of three Home Publicity posters, each headed with a representation of the Tudor crown as a symbol of the head of state. The first ministry print run produced almost 2,500,000 copies of Keep Calm and Carry On, but until 2012 – when 20 copies turned up on an episode of the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow – it was believed that only two copies had escaped pulping. Since then the poster has become internationally recognised and is widely associated with a belief in British stoicism and the “stiff upper lip”. After interest from customers, a few reproductions were made and sold. ![]() Manley and his wife, Mary, framed it and hung it on the wall behind the cash register. It was discovered 16 years ago at the bottom of a box of old books by Stuart Manley, the owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland. The surviving Keep Calm print will go on sale at the fair in Olympia with a price tag of £21,250 at the Manning Fine Art stand. A year later, once Britain had weathered the onslaught of the Blitz, all the printed posters were sent back for pulping and recycling as part of the wider paper salvage drive, due to the shortage of raw materials. The poster was designed by the Ministry of Information in the summer of 1939 to represent a message from the King to his subjects, and it was hoped it would reassure the public and prevent widespread panic. ![]()
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