Thirteen British Council films from the 1940s have been digitised and are now available from their Time/Image website. These documentaries reflect the work of great directors such as Mary Field (Development of the English Town), Philip Leacock/Paul Rotha (Island People) and Ken Annakin (London 1942), as well as an apprenticeship for future ones such as John Krish (editor of Election 1945). However, they represent far more than an interesting thread of British documentary film history. They provide an interesting insight into what Philip Guedalla, the Chairman of the British Council Film Committee, described in 1941 as an ‘…effort to portray the face of Britain and her people in their everyday lives and work, as they went about them in the eager, anxious months of a great war.’ Although described as propaganda at the time, this promotion of British values and culture to an international audience might be more readily recognised today as the forerunner of public diplomacy.

The films are designed to promote an exploration of the British Council archive as well as debate and discussion on, for example, the role of these films in the development of a British brand for overseas consumption and how this might have changed over the years. Although not available on the site, the British Council distributed the newsreel British News to all British colonies. It was compiled from the ten weekly issues produced by the five major British newsreel companies which produced each issue in rotation. These films also provide a useful comparison with the cinemagazines produced by the Central Office of Information from the late 1950s. These series, such as Transatlantic Teleview and British Sporting Personalities are fully documented within News on Screen