ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom’s position as a European and world power was put to its harshest test in modern times during World War II. In its own small domain, the book trade’s experience of war was strangely ambiguous. The triumphant progress of Penguin books through its first four years (which, as it turned out, were the last four years of peace) showed that there was a market to be tapped outside the limited range of those who normally bought books. Far from being a dying art in the age of cinema and radio, reading was still a form of entertainment and enlightenment which could command a mass audience. The underlying power of the attraction of the printed word was to be graphically demonstrated during the five years of World War II, when the demand for books rose to an unprecedented level, and the difficulties of supplying them were equally unprecedented.
