Cecil Beaton: Pipe Down for Make and Mend by Cecil Beaton - 1942.

As an official photographer for the British Ministry of Information, Beaton travelled far and wide to document the impact of war on people and places in his own unique style. In later life, Beaton came to regard his war photographs as his single most important body of photographic work. He took some 7,000 photographs for the Ministry of Information covering all aspects of the Second World War.

Beaton also spent time drawing pictures of the pilots, sailors, soldiers, doctors, nurses, and officers he met during the war. He drew them in sketch books or on the pages of his diary. - Flashbak

Cecil Beaton :  Servant of Viceroy's staff Date 1944. 

As an official photographer for the British Ministry of Information, Beaton travelled far and wide to document the impact of war on people and places in his own unique style. In later life, Beaton came to regard his war photographs as his single most important body of photographic work. He took some 7,000 photographs for the Ministry of Information covering all aspects of the Second World War.

Beaton also spent time drawing pictures of the pilots, sailors, soldiers, doctors, nurses, and officers he met during the war. He drew them in sketch books or on the pages of his diary. - Flashbak

Cecil Beaton: The Operating Room - 1942

As an official photographer for the British Ministry of Information, Beaton travelled far and wide to document the impact of war on people and places in his own unique style. In later life, Beaton came to regard his war photographs as his single most important body of photographic work. He took some 7,000 photographs for the Ministry of Information covering all aspects of the Second World War.

Beaton also spent time drawing pictures of the pilots, sailors, soldiers, doctors, nurses, and officers he met during the war. He drew them in sketch books or on the pages of his diary. - Flashbak

Cecil Beaton : Commander Romer and Flight Lieutenant Hosegood by Cecil Beaton - WW2.

As an official photographer for the British Ministry of Information, Beaton travelled far and wide to document the impact of war on people and places in his own unique style. In later life, Beaton came to regard his war photographs as his single most important body of photographic work. He took some 7,000 photographs for the Ministry of Information covering all aspects of the Second World War.

Beaton also spent time drawing pictures of the pilots, sailors, soldiers, doctors, nurses, and officers he met during the war. He drew them in sketch books or on the pages of his diary. - Flashbak

An example of how an inter-war travel poster style was used unchanged during the war to arouse patriotic feelings for an idealised pastoral Britain, defined by the landscape of southern England. Frank Newbould was a noted designer of travel posters.

A young factory worker in blue overalls is shown at work on an industrial lathe, cutting and turning the breech-ring component of a Bofors anti-aircraft gun. Other factory workers are visible in the background - 1943.

Dame Laura Knight (4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who in 1936 became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

in the autumn of 1942 the War Artists' Advisory Committee commissioned Knight to paint a portrait to bolster female recruitment to the ordnance factories. The painting was first shown on 30 April 1943 at the Royal Academy and the next day was reproduced in eight British newspapers. 

George Clausen (1852–1944) : Returning to the Reconquered Land, 1918.

'British artist Sir George Clausen (1852-1944) was commissioned in 1918 by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to paint a large canvas focusing on the subject of agriculture behind the lines in France. Clausen was a well-known British landscape, figure and portrait painter. However, his journey to France during the winter of 1918-1919 had a great impact on him and, instead of agriculture, the resulting painting shows the artist's impression of the population returning to search for their ruined homes after the Armistice.'

- War Museum

War Effort draft poster by designer Tom Purvis, 1939-1945.

'Tom Purvis was born in Bristol and studied at Camberwell School of Art. He spent six years with the advertising firm Mather and Crowther, and before working freelance whilst studying lithography at the Avenue Press. He had a unique gift for solving complicated visual problems by producing a simple design in sharp bright colours and basic shapes. Purvis worked for the LNER (London and North East Railway) from 1923-43 and his most accomplished work for them comprised six posters collectively titled East Coast Joys detailing the various pastimes that could be enjoyed at the seaside without referring to any particular locality or town. The posters formed a continuous scene when shown together. His pared down designs for the men’s tailor, Austin Reed, and Canadian Pacific shipping line caught the glamour and elegance of the 1930s.

'He was one of the first eleven Royal Designers for Industry in 1936. During the Second World War he was commissioned as a war artist by the Ministry of Supply and for companies such as Pilkington Glass and Rolls Royce. After the war he abandoned poster design to paint portraits and, in his last years, religious pictures. He died on 27 August 1957.'

Chief Photographer's Mate (CPHoM) Robert F. Sargent: Photograph of the Normandy Invasion - France; “Into the Jaws of Death — U.S. Troops wading through water and Nazi gunfire”, circa 1944-06-06.

After the Battle, 1918, a watercolour and ink on paper by Paul Nash. 

Paul Nash (11 May 1889 – 11 July 1946) was a British surrealist painter and war artist, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. Nash was among the most important landscape artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the development of Modernism in English art.

Aerial Battle with contrails - Battle of Britain (1941) by Paul Nash.

Paul Nash (11 May 1889 – 11 July 1946) was a British surrealist painter and war artist, as well as a photographer, writer and designer of applied art. Nash was among the most important landscape artists of the first half of the twentieth century. He played a key role in the development of Modernism in English art. 

"It is more serious than you think. The barbarian is almost at your gates. He violates, plunders, murders. Don't let him get a footing on British soil. Help to repel the invasion by enlisting now." A World War 1 Poster calling for British mean to enlist - 1915.

'Daddy, what did you do in the great war?' - poster designed and printed by Johnson, Riddle & Co., Ltd., London, S.E. It was Created by the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee in 1915.

Cecil Beaton's image of a soldier battling his way through a sandstorm in the Western Desert during 1942. Imperial War Museum.

Cecil Beaton : Half length portrait of Queen Fawzieh, first wife of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi of Iran, in Teheran. Date: 1942. Imperial War Museum.

Eric Ravilious : Commander Looking Through the Periscope. Date: 1941.

In the early years of the 20th Century, Robert McGee sat for photographer E.E. Henry (1826-1917). The picture, the portrait you see above, shows McGee after he was scalped in the summer of 1864.

Back then, the 14-year-old orphan had been recruited as a teamster with the H.C. Barret company to transport a caravan of flour to Fort Union in New Mexico Territory. Date: c.1890

The full story can be read on our site. 

Poster showing Joan of Arc in armor with a group of soldiers on horseback.
Published in New York : Harper & Brothers Publishers. Date: 1894. At Library of Congress

This striking poster was part of an anti-VD campaign in 1943-1944 and warns of the ‘easy’ girlfriend who can spread disease. It was designed by Reginald Mount (1906-79).

Anti-rumour and careless talk You forget - but she remembers. Created between 1939 and 1946.

Keep mum she's not so dumb. Careless talk costs lives - Description:  Rough sketch Date between 1939 and 1946.

Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville - working on a "Vengeance" dive bomber, Tennessee - photographer Alfred T. Palmer, February 1943 (FSA- Office of War Information).

Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies – by David Bransby, June 1942 (FSA- Office of War Information), Library of Congress (LC-USW36-273).