Carefully Concealed Connections: The Ministry of Information and British Publishing, 1939-1946

1. Introduction: "In the Borderland"

"Books," declared Winston Churchill, "offer the means whereby civilization may be carried triumphantly forward."¹ Yet however potent their symbolism, books are first and foremost material objects whose very existence depends on the availability of raw materials, manpower, and machinery. In World War II, all of these were in short supply, so how did the British government manage to carry out its book-buying and publishing program? More precisely, what was the nature of the relationship of the Ministry of Information (MOI) with professional publishers? To answer these questions means addressing first the issue of historical precedent.

Fortunately for book historians, Sir Robert Donald's Enquiry into the Extent and Efficiency of Propaganda, carried out in 1917, included a short but highly critical Report on the Purchase and Publication of Books, which accused the British government's wartime Department of Information of dealings with publishers that were neither consistent nor cost-effective, and recommended reducing the use of printed material.² This proved so inflammatory that it provoked not only a point-by-point rebuttal, but a detailed report, British Propaganda During the War 1914–1918, which explained exactly why, how, and on what terms the British government had produced, purchased, and distributed books and pamphlets to allied and neutral countries and to the dominions. At the outbreak of war, "Wellington House" (the War Propaganda Bureau) had had to improvise, but by 1918 there existed a model of how publications might be handled in any future war and a summary record of operations for future historians to consult.³

It is worth recalling that propaganda has a dual effect: on the mass audience to whom it is addressed, but also on the organization from which it stems and whose survival or power depends on the desired response.⁴ To avoid provoking the same negative reactions as recent German propaganda, the British solution was to distribute small books and pamphlets which gave no indication that they were other than trade publications: "The existence of a publishing establishment at Wellington House, and, a fortiori, the connexion of the Government with this establishment were carefully concealed," as the MOI admitted. "Except official publications, none of the literature bore overt marks of its origin."⁵ This point is exemplified by a list of 120 publications whose named authors range from academic historians and philosophers to novelists such as G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Together with a further fifty anonymous short works, they were translated into seventeen different languages.⁶

The department also produced its own cheap material, written by staff and printed by His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO), which was then sold to a selected list of publishers, each of whom was paid 5 guineas for allowing their firm's imprint to be used and a further £5 towards the cost of advertising, an arrangement officially explained as reflecting "great credit on their patriotism." To ensure that the appearance of normality was maintained through the distribution process, printed material was placed on sale if possible, or sent free through individuals already in contact with each other, most of it carried voluntarily by the main shipping companies.⁷

Although the use of print culture as a medium of propaganda diminished in 1918, developments in three separate but interlinked spheres during the 1930s gave a new impetus to the practices adopted by the government in its production and purchasing of publications when war once again broke out. First, the impact of Penguin's success, the paperback revolution, and the success of new forms of group reading such as Victor Gollancz's Left Book Club established the existence of a mass market for serious literature. Following the classification of literary periodicals by Q. D. Leavis, that market was often broken down into the categories of highbrow, middlebrow, or lowbrow, according to the type of likely reader it would...