Representing Everyday British Leisure Lives

A series of ten posters produced in 1946 by the Central Office of Information and entitled Life in Britain Today show images that clearly promoted everyday experiences of both work and play. With titles such as “A typical city thoroughfare.”, “A typical British Royal Pageant.” and “A typical British Recreation Centre.” these images were reflections of every aspect of British life. Their captions clearly explained the values and beliefs that epitomized this existence. Intricate descriptions of the nature of the scene depicted qualify Life in Britain Today by turn as bucolic and industrious, relaxed and energetic. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the posters is that they were produced not only in English but also in Arabic, Persian and Hebrew. Recording, measuring and picturing the daily routines of the British in both word and image had been an everyday feature of life during wartime but it appears to have also been an essential component of the postwar push to confirm the identity of a nation in recovery. This paper asks whose identity was pictured here and to what ends?