Britain at Bay: Peace & War 1937 – 1940

Britain at Bay is a programme of films from the BFI National Archive, some rarely screened, others rightly celebrated. They vividly capture the transition from optimism to high alert as the nation faced up to another momentous conflict.

For many, British life in the inter-war years was characterised by a forward-looking idealism, an age in which tradition was celebrated and new ideas embraced. Despite the trauma of the Great Depression, the 1930s became the era of Mass Observation, an attempt to capture the minutiae of everyday British life, and the ‘Machine Age’, which saw developments in industry, consumer products and public amenities enabling the population at large to enjoy improvements to every aspect of work and leisure. Yet just as progress beckoned, the government had to prepare its citizens for the worst as war with Germany shifted from distant threat to grim reality.

For a taster of this programme view an extract of English Harvest below…

Around the Village Green
1937

English Harvest
1938

Sam Goes Shopping
1939

Spare Time
1939

War Library Items 1, 2 and 3
1939

If War Should Come
1939

The First Days
1939

Britain at Bay
1940