Ministerial Mayhem: The Control of Photography Order, 1939

Author: ocarterwakefield1
Date: Monday, March 11, 2019
Section: Research

(D 1199) A Mobile Film Unit car leaving MoI headquarters at Senate House London; 1940
(D 1199) A Mobile Film Unit car leaving MoI headquarters at Senate House London; 1940. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205195723

Sir Philip Hesketh-Smithers went to the folk-dancing department; Mr Pauling went to woodcuts and weaving; Mr Digby-Smith was given the Arctic circle; Mr Bentley himself, after a dizzy period in which, for a day, he directed a film about postmen, for another day filed press-cuttings from Istanbul, and for the rest of the week supervised the staff catering, found himself at length back beside his busts in charge of the men of letters.

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The occupation of northern France in the First World War

Author: jamesconnolly1
Date: Thursday, July 5, 2018
Section: Research

German troops marching through the main square in Lille for the ceremony of Changing the Guard. © IWM (Q 55207)

In works on French history, the word ‘Occupation’ (often capitalised) is heavily associated with the Occupation of the Second World War, France’s ‘Dark Years’ of 1940–44. However, whilst this was and remains the defining experience of military occupation for the French, there were other instances of this phenomenon in the country’s modern history. In the case of the First World War, when the war of movement subsided in September – October 1914 around 2.1 million French people found themselves cut off from the rest of the country by the trench networks running from the coast to the Swiss border.

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