Publishing in Hot and Cold Wars

This conference is concerned with the distinctive ways in which the communication of ideas, news, and entertainment was conducted nationally and internationally during the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War. Our main focus will be on print production, but we will also want to provide a context for this in terms of broadcast materials, and documentary and feature films. We are interested in propaganda, in censorship, in the sustaining of morale at home, and in the projection of ideologies abroad. Relationships between government, government agencies, actually or apparently independent institutions, and publishers and writers, will also of interest.

This is an international conference, but one of its strands will concern Britain's Ministry of Information (George Orwell's "Minitrue"), which operated during the Second World War from London University's Senate House, in which the conference will be held. There will be a talk on the history of Senate House and a conducted tour of the building as part of the programme.

This conference will not be a wholly conventional one. In part it should be regarded as a meeting to plan a major book and, possibly, a subsequent research project. This means that we are having no parallel sessions - everyone will get to hear and discuss everything - and that all participants are of equal status. This will include all those who attend but who do not deliver papers, as we want as wide an input into the discussions as we can get. Given the constraint of the rooms in which the conference will be held, numbers will be strictly limited so early application is recommended.

Registration fees:
£45 standard
£35 speakers/IES members/students