Fit Men Wanted

This book reproduces the best of the Imperial War Museum’s collection of over 30,000 British Government wartime posters and proclamations, mostly from the First and Second World Wars, and most forgotten after their initial use. 100 eye-catching posters (with 62 perforated and detachable) contain stirring messages that once exhorted citizens to do their bit for the war effort: ‘Eat Greens for Health’, ‘Beer: A Necessity to the Strength of Britain’, ‘Fit Men Wanted’, ‘Victory is in the Kitchen’, ‘The Supreme Test of British Womanhood Comes Now’. Today they seem charmingly innocent, quintessentially British, and often very funny. The posters that bear them are a treasury of vintage graphics. Like the much-loved ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster, these proclamations are just what we need to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humour in our own troubled times.