How did British society react to the sudden increase of women in the workforce during the First World War? Or the thousands of colonial volunteers brought over to fight Nazism?

 

Susan Wokoma (Chewing Gum, Cheaters) is given a personal guided tour by IWM curator Geoff Spender, as the actor discovers the artists and photographers behind those stories -  encountering censored images of wartime Britain in the process.

 

They are joined by Dr Diya Gupta,  lecturer in public history at City University of London, as our tour takes us via India and the West Indies, in search of the beginnings of multiculturalism as we know it today.

 

Objects Discussed:

Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918

Olive Edis, Women’s Services in France, 1919 photographs

MOI Censored Photographs

MOI Colour Photographs

John Page, Paul Rotha Productions, West Indies Calling, 1943

Cecil Beaton, Official war photographs of Asia and Africa, 1942–1944

 

Narrator:  James Taylor. Producer: Matt Hill at Rethink Audio, with support from Eleanor Head, Daniel BenChorin, and the IWM Institute team at Imperial War Museums