Chose to have a different subtitle, the book the book at war. Its called how reading shaped conflict and conflict shaped reading. And that, in a nutshell, describes what im trying do in this book. If we think about books at war at all, its probably in this context. But books as victims. Victims of bombing victims, of theft, looting and that is part of the story. And its the story we told in our history of libraries when we had a chapter in that book called surviving the 20th century about how books were not about but i to point want to make to you today is that books were not just victims of war but active agents of war books were essential for waging of war as macleish that in the director of the of congress made the point modern war. He said cannot be fought without most complete Library Resources of books played an part in scientific and essential war making. It played an important part in intelligence operations and of course, to topography is the essence of war fighting over borders, fighting over land as always, Franklin D Roosevelt in capsule8 at this in a telling phrase books are weapons in the war of ideas. I also have to acknowledge that books played a large role in spreading the ideologies cause for in the first place, and that is both in the democracy cs and in the dictatorships dictatorships. So if people like Franklin D RooseveltArchibald Macleish were so well aware of how important, what books would be in wartime, its inevitable that the dictatorships stalin, hitler would be equally aware of the need to command print for their cause. We see in the Second World War an enormous amount of looting. On the left we see a post with nazi officials sorting books have been taken. It says revolt, not fear. In fact, thats telling. In in estonia. And so books were first of all in the first years of the war the states that the germans conquered. First of all poland. There was a great destruction of the intent to reduce poland to agricultural population with no elites. So education was to be largely and their books were all taken away. But then the policy changed. And because the nazi regime, germany was meant to be a force. And youre right, they thought it would be best to keep the books of all the adversary ideologies they were seeking to extinguish, so that if any point join thousand years, they needed know about socialism or judaism or free masonry, theyd have books to hand. And here they plan to create ten libraries of 500,000 books each. This the the extent of the rapacity, the stealing of books, libraries in france and the netherlands and denmark. In poland, czechoslovakia was so in so enormous that most of them never got out of their packing cases. And this is the allied book of sorting center in frankfurt. We see on the other side with those packing cases of books which had been intended for these new enormous nazi libraries, but never got out of their cases. Well, what im going to try do for you today is to move through a number of aspects of books in wartime by focusing on a whole range of, people whose functions brought them into contact with books. The publishers are essential without publishers. There is no books. Librarians are also an essential role and will be kind to them today because one of our our guests this evening, one of my former phd students is a librarian. So i know not to mess with librarians, a prisoner of war, a censor. Censorship plays, an essential role in. Wartime sources, the other hand, have a very difficult time war as well discover. And then a reader, a survivor. And lastly, a statesman. One of the extraordinary aspects of the Second World War is that most of the leaders of the combatant combatant nations were themselves bestselling authors and that something will come on to. Lets start then with the publisher for wartime brings all sorts of new challenge for the publishers books. First of all they have of course the bombs then they lose as many of their staff to active service many also of authors also turn to work they have to deal with enhanced censorship and readers in particular want different sorts of books. The war creates new demand as people want to know, particularly about their soldiers, but they certainly want to know about the course of war, especially, i this accounts so many publishers have to change their program of publishing very very radically. They could up with all of that but what they resented at a time when patient paper rationed and paper was short what they particularly resented was to see the government setting itself up as a competitor in the publishing business. Here we see two, two publications by the government is Stationery Office and these became popular with the reading public. They started with a very much less lavish pamphlet on the battle of britain, which sold Something Like a million copies in its first year and helped define the controls of, the battle of britain as a heroic struggle. So it was a factual pamphlet which was extremely propaganda. And then we have work on all the branches, the services, the allied services, like the australia troops, the canadian troops, even the dutch navy who had sailed over to join the allies and these sold for between sixpence two shillings each. I one of the things i did preparing for to write this jericho it it must be said was i read an awful lot of wartime diaries and i got to the diary of a lincoln a part of person who was going on a small train journey in lincolnshire, got into his carriage holding combined operations, which would last him for the journey and found all five of the passenger is in the carriage had this same pamphlet very, very popular, but publishers thought this wasnt quite playing fair because the government had access operational photography to military bases so they could produce these incredibly. Illustrated pamphlets books in a way which was much more difficult for commercial publishers. Well, im going to focus in each case on one individual, and im going to start with the publisher. My is alan lane, who was the inventor and proprietor of Penguin Books. Now penguins was revolution in publishing and came along right at the appropriate. In 1935, four years before the Second World War broke. It was intended offer modern fiction in very editions. Penguin books would be as against seven shillings and sixpence, which was the normal cost of. A hardback book of this type. So you got 15 penguins for the price. One hardback book. But first, of course he had to buy the rights from the publishers whod published the books in hardback and they could have strangled by birth if one of them hadnt broken ranks and given him the right to publish five of these books. And he was up and running and never looked back. In addition to these modern books of literature and fiction he also introduced an incredible, successful new series called the penguins. And these were small paperbacks about currents fairs. Now, in the run up the war, they a few of them sold less than 100,000 copies. They were immense successful. And of course, because they were so successful. This meant he had sold such a volume of books that when paper rationing came in during the war, he had a very generous ration by the end of the he had published upward 700 different titles. No normally he had a very good judge of judgment, what he should be publishing and how perhaps less so with this advertisement. I hope can see it clearly. Its an advertisement in the one of the inside desk for the penguin pen you could have for five shillings and sixpence and its advertised by very jolly tommy with his bayonet piercing the backside of a german looks very look like adult hitler. Now this went down quite well on the home front. But when these books were sold, a prisoner of war camps where they were re censored by the germans. This didnt wasnt seen as funny all and for a long period in 1943 Penguin Books were banned prisoner of war camps as result. So penguin completely transformed forms the provision of books on the home front but also for and this was especially so with the second paperback venture and that was the famous America Services editions. Now this was extraordinarily in that the American Services had a committee which chose which titles be published and then were published this strange tableau footnote. They used the readers presses and they actually published two books together. And then guillotine in them separate. So you had to have books that are exactly the same length in order to achieve this mostly modern fiction, but also a lot of classics some nonfiction texts as well. And they these were distributed free of charge to America Service people wherever they were in the world. So as a pacific atoll, you were on cases of these books would arrive and they would and they were distributed to the troops. They were enormously popular and very influential. If we look at, for instance, at Scott Fitzgeralds great gatsby, that didnt sell well when it was first published, but reissued as one of the American Services. It was introduced to a whole new audience and became the classical book, the classic as it now is. So thats publisher an important figure. Lets move on now to libraries. Now libraries is couldnt close in wartime they were so essential to the purposes of war making and to recreational literature which was that traditional function but probably took a bit of a backseat in the war. This is the library at war it a Central Point of information one of these notices. The notice in the middle is for compulsory insurance and. This was the place you went to get regulations like air raid precautions. The pamphlet would be on display or new rules and regulations which tradespeople to follow during wartime. So also by providing room for the red cross, for meetings, the libraries playing an essential role in war. They also a very great deal of advice on cooking, keeping chickens and rabbits on growing vegetables. When you think that in britain imports were down 30 to 30 of their prewar levels, you can see that everybody was doing their very best to, contribute as much as they could to putting food on their own table. However, this compels prewar insurance played an unexplained, active role when 6 million copies of the publishers stock were destroyed in one catch a strategic raid. In december 1940. This wiped out backstop of about 15 different publishers. But this wasnt all bad because of course book is books are in warehouses because nobody had bought them. But they got the full value of this heavily. The written down stock from that war insurance. And this brings us to a point which unwin they distinguished publisher made and that was the wartime publishers despite all the problems that ive just talked about publishers actually made lot of money because the factories with paper rationing being short output way down, new books, everything that they sold out and sold quickly. So well. Unknown describes as greatest expense in publishing, which is publishers error. You put your money on a book succeeding you pay 5000 copies, 500 sell and then you are in trouble. You can only hope that the profit will come along and. Youll get the insurance back for. Libraries. Also played a more much more proactive role in both world wars with these book drives as we see on the photographs clearly, a posed photograph of two young ladies in the Second World War with some of the books which arrive and this other poster your money brings the books we need where we want it. This is the American Library of Associations Campaign in the first world war. But these sort of drives didnt really work. They didnt work because many of the soldiers to whom they were destined were on the whole urban working class people, whereas most of the people giving the books, People Like Us rummaging around in their back cupboards for books that they no longer wanted, there was a total mismatch between donor and recipient. Also, of course, these hardback books, particularly in the first world, will take up much more space that the American Service editions, which i described, the librarian i wanted to introduce you to was Althea Warren on this side by the. On the left, as youre looking, who was rector of the los angeles public. Between 1933 and 1947, and she ran the victory Books Campaign she was very well respected, heidi efficient. It makes several points. One is that it brings to our attention the feminization of the American Library profession, which was much more much earlier and more rapid than it was in europe at the beginning of the war. Librarians in were almost exclusively male, particularly the higher ranked librarians, and also very, very conservative. Whereas in america wed have leading librarians, leading libraries from the 1890s onwards. So a very different state of affairs. Ive also since were in new york at adding another character of some importance alice hudson who was the head of the new york map division, worked in it from 1970 to 2009, and she has been an important figure rather later than the war. But looking back on the role of the New York Public Library map division in the war, when the japanese attacked pearl harbor, america leaders realized that knew very little about many of the Pacific Islands that they were their troops were going to spend so much time fighting on. The situation was so that at that point they put out a call to americans to send in their guidebooks holiday stamps in the hope that then theyd know a little bit more the Marshall Islands and they did however the funds of knowledge was really the neutral public which had a collection of hundred thousand maps which were now put to very good use in the war effort. The library of congress had point 4 million, but unfortunately nonamerican left maps hadnt been cataloged. So actually getting find anything was very and the army service set up cartography courses 57 different colleges around america and during the course of the war they turned out Something Like 500 million maps for the various that they had to fight. Map in the center is to make another point and that is the importance map making in europe as a as an incitement to war famously. Woodrow wilson when he became the first president in Office Travel outside the western hemisphere. Think of that to supervise the creation of 14 new countries that the at the this a Peace Process found himself down his hands and knees scrambling over maps a very great deal but the solutions of course were toxic to the germans who still claimed as this map shows that a large part of the central landmass of germany of europe should be part of a greater germany and the convention of german geographers. As early as 1921 passed a resolution that any maps and atlas is used in school should show these greater borders rather than the present borders of germany. So that schoolchildren should not lose a sense of grievance about what had happened at the end of the first world war. You. Want to come on now to prisoners of war who . Of course, they ultimate captive audience for books and many of read incessantly my individual choice. Here is Second Lieutenant francis, who was captured in june of 1940. So was a prisoner of war for almost five years now. Many prisoners of war kept a journal. And in this Francis Stewart recorded everything that he was reading. And he says in the course of this time he read almost 350 books. But he said im a very slow reader. And he had a chum who had read a thousand books. Now, prisoners of war extremely well supplied this as this p. O. W. Library makes clear they were supplied because camps, developed large libraries, but also because personal collections sent by friends and family were regarded almost as a as a collective resource as well. You were expected to land or swap or make available your books to and of course people read seriously. This was the sort of time when it was possible to sit down and read war and or the complete of art to the trollop was a great wartime favorite. You had plenty of time, but it was also a time for getting qualifications. And at the Bodleian Library in oxford there was a special unit charged with sending over a textbook for the over 100 courses that they the prisoners of war took during the course of the Second World War. Now the lonely economy is something i was able to pursue, and i found a book with a facsimile of a handwritten cab newspaper paper during the war which somehow survived copies. This what happened was on the on the death march at the end of the war, the prison of the editor. This just when he found someone watching the prisoners go by, he just thrust these newspapers into this ladys hand and say, can you keep these for me . Ill come back to them some time. And she did. And he and so they survived astonish. She and his of the book advertisements, which appear on this manuscript, the newsletter wanted on loan for a very short period. Richardsons comment. Pamela and clarissa and smolletts roderick ransom and humphrey clinker. If you want these books for a very short period, it is clear that they are for revision for an exam because theyre not the sort books that you would read in a very short period wanted. Norwegian grammar in return for cigarets cigarets of course where they were the currency of prisoner of war camps. So you happen to be a nonsmoker which very few people were in those days then you then you were rich because you had lots of money in your pocket which you were not going to smoke elementary spanish returned to german elementary grammar. Now i think this is quite near the end of the war when people could see which way the wind was blowing so giving up that german and lost a copy of some of a salado by roberts service so he was a british canadian poet then very success for the song of sardo it sold up to 3 million copi