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This book traces the origins and early development of what are today loosely termed Britain's Overseas Information Services. It examines how, at the end of the First World War, the British government came to forfeit the considerable lead it had established in propaganda since 1914, and the reasons why it had gradually to re-enter the field during the inter-war years as a direct response to totalitarianism. It surveys the pioneering work of the Foreign Office News Department and its important press office, the commercial propaganda conducted by the Empire Marketing Board and the Travel Association, the foundation and rapid peacetime growth of the British Council to conduct 'cultural diplomacy', and the beginning of the BBC's World Service with the inauguration of foreign-language broadcasts in 1938

In November, 1934, the British Council for Relations with Other Countries was founded on the initiative of the Foreign Office. The decision to establish a body specifically designed to conduct cultural propaganda overseas on behalf of the British Government was, perhaps, the most constructive peacetime response to the growing realization that more positive measures were required to counter the detrimental effects of aggressive foreign propaganda upon British interests and prestige. The British Council, which continued to operate under the auspices of the Foreign Office, offered a new and alternative approach to the traditional conduct of foreign affairs: the practice of cultural diplomacy. It was believed that cultural propaganda — broadly interpreted as the dissemination of British ideals and beliefs in a general rather than specifically political form – would not only serve to enhance British influence and prestige abroad, but would also effectively further the wider ideals of international peace and understanding.