The Sceptic Isle

A major reassessment of the British government's communication of the goals of the Second World War, and how its propaganda undermined the people's faith in the reliability of war news and the credibility of political leaders.
While waging war against enemies overseas, governments also need to win the hearts and minds of their own citizens. The media is critical to delivering the official message, raising public support for war, maintaining morale, spelling out goals, downplaying setbacks, and presenting a bright vision of the postwar future. In public memory, the British people were united in their support for the Second World War. Yet this popular image of the People's War neglects the fact that the war had to be sold. In this work, historian Steven Casey examines how media, government, and armed forces worked to convince the British public to support the war, and how the British home front often questioned and challenged the official line. Casey stresses how the British military forged a relationship with reporters, how this relationship shaped news coverage of the fighting, and how this coverage exerted a profound impact on every other dimension of the government's private and public actions. Officials, Casey argues, failed to communicate effectively with the British people, undermined public trust, and called into question the credibility of the political leadership. Remarkably, the BBC and Fleet Street sometimes relayed German communiques to the public because the British government failed to release timely reports of its own. The Sceptic Isle provides a bold reassessment of how the British government sold the Second World War to the British public. It powerfully showcases the major credibility gap that cast a long shadow over the British government's efforts to sell the different dimensions of the Second World War to the home front.