Persephone Books recently purchased a very rare original copy of this poster. ‘Your Courage Your Cheerfulness Your Resolution’ was designed in July 1939, along with the much better-known ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ and ‘Freedom is in Peril, Defend it with all your Might.’ The three posters were distributed just after the outbreak of war but, as Susannah Walker writes in her book Home Front Posters of the Second World War: "The message was seen as patronising and, worse, divisive. The image of ordinary men being sacrificed for the sake of the politicians and generals was still fresh from the First World War, and this poster, with its distinction between your sacrifices and our victory was too much of a reminder of this. The failure of the campaign is generally blamed on upper- class civil servants who were unable to understand the mood of the people at the start of the war. And in the case of 'Your Courage' many people were confused by this poster because they associated resolutions with the New Year rather than war." A million copies of ‘Courage’, 600,000 copies of ‘Freedom’ and 2.5 million copies of ‘Keep Calm’ were printed but the majority were very soon pulped. We had never seen the ‘Courage’ poster before and two things appealed: the beauty of the very ‘period’ red, especially when set against Persephone grey; and we do not actually find the slogan either kitsch or patronising, in fact we find it slightly uplifting. Obviously the word ‘victory’ is upsetting since in an ideal world no one would ever want to be ‘victorious’ over anyone else, however it does make it very obvious that it was a wartime poster. When we are tempted to have a moan, we shall look at our 'Courage' poster and cheer up. A reproduction is available in A3 (30 cm x 42 cm), unframed, and printed on 350gsm uncoated (matte) paper so that it is sturdy enough to prop up on your desk or stick on your fridge without having to bother to frame it.
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