SOCIETY
Keep Calm and Carry On
The origins of the ubiquitous phrase
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I was reading a recent story by Kelly Smith about neolocalism and the challenges and rewards of finding an authentically local coffee shop among all the usual homogeneous high-street brands.
Like myself, Kelly is from the Northeast of England. Reading her account of seeking a local boutique coffee shop in Newcastle took me back to the years I lived in that city, and in nearby Northumberland.
In particular, it brought back fond memories of a delightful place called Barter Books in Alnwick.
It’s one of the biggest second-hand bookstores in the country, yet has managed to retain the idiosyncratic charm of the quaintest small establishment.
And yes, it has its own very unique coffee shop.
It resides in the town’s old Victorian railway station, and the proprietors have done a grand job of restoring the building to much of its former glory. Nowadays, though, the only trains that run there are on the model railway that meanders around the bookshelves.
My parents and sister used to live in Alnwick and whenever my wife and I visited, it was always a much-anticipated treat to spend an hour or two at Barter Books.
Although it’s been many years since I visited there, I well remember their cornucopia of second-hand and rare books and the array of cosy armchairs where you can sit with a coffee, by an open fire, and browse through the treasures you’ve discovered there (and there are always treasures to be found).
For a bookworm and coffee-lover like me, it’s paradise on earth.
In 2001, we were visiting my sister in Alnwick and noticed a poster on her wall. The wording is now ubiquitous and known all over the world, but back then it was a novelty.
It was, of course, the now well-known “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster.
The British Government’s Ministry of Information originally produced the famous motivational poster at the start of the Second World War in 1939 to encourage a ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude and avoid panic during the blitz.
Although over 2 million copies were printed, it was never officially issued, and very few had survived. Then in the year 2000, the proprietors of Barter Books, Stuart and Mary Manley, had discovered an original copy in a box of dusty old books they had sitting around.
After framing it and displaying it on the wall of the bookshop, they had so many enquiries about it that they decided to make some copies.
They ran off a few facsimiles and sold them in the bookshop. Little did they know the phrase and the design would become so popular and would be reproduced on billions of posters, mugs, keyrings and teeshirts around the world.
An endless list of variations on the phrase have also been produced. Keep calm and carry on eating chocolate… carry on surfing… carry on writing.
You name it, we have been told to keep calm while we carry on doing it!
But it all came from that single war-time poster found in Barter Books twenty-four years ago.
In a way, this story perfectly illustrates the loss of narrative, culture and heritage which Kelly writes about.
Mass reproduction kills the spirit of experience. It turns an authentic souvenir of an afternoon spent lost in a good book, on a comfy armchair by an open fire, in a setting evocative of a war-time railway station into a trite throwaway phrase printed on a million Amazon trinkets.
But it also proves another of Kelly’s points:
Humans are storytellers, and in most places the stories are already present if you care to look for them
So now you know the phrase’s origin, the next time you see it printed on a mug or keyring, you’ll remember this tale.
And if you are ever in Alnwick, make sure to pay Barter Books a visit. You won’t be disappointed.
