``To guide,help and hearten millions''

Abstract

This paper examines the cultural representations of commercial advertising. Based on a case study of the British home front during the Second World War, it explores the efforts of commercial advertisers to speak in the idiom of the time, charting their reactions to the dramatic events being played out around them. Alongside this, it draws on a variety of sources to characterize the nature of the people's interaction with the war and thereby examines whether the more down-to-earth language of advertisers proved to be more appropriate than the lofty rhetoric of government propaganda. The conclusion suggests that commercial advertising offers an important insight to the historian in characterizing past cultures and societies.