I could tell it was a “thing” not only because of my own reaction – I took a sense of comfort from it – but also because other people in the office really loved it and wanted to have one too. At the time I was working at the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, and when I got back I rang Barter Books and requested a poster to include in a roundup of things for the home. I was told it came from a tiny bookshop in Alnwick. The poster was on the wall of the kitchen where we all gathered to cook and eat meals. I discovered Keep Calm and Carry On in 2005 when I went on a writing retreat in Devon. Susie Steiner, author and former Guardian journalist Although it probably needs updating – Keep Calm and Stay at Home. Suddenly, with coronavirus, we’re getting a dozen a week – nothing like what happened back in 2005, but enough to prove it has a timeless resonance. In the last year or so, we’ve typically only had two or three orders a month. We’ve probably sold somewhere in the region of 100,000 copies to date. Photograph: The Print Collector/Alamy Stock Photo View image in fullscreen Carry On, 1941, by Cecil Beaton … a rare wartime sighting of the poster. When I’m asked why it was so popular, I always say the same thing: it’s cheaper than antidepressants. But the actual basic message has helped a lot of people, I think. Lots of people jumped on the bandwagon and, frankly, some of the parodies I got sick to the teeth of. It’s probably fair to say that by the end of 2006, when I was down in London and saw a Keep Calm mug with “Made in China” on the bottom, that it had gone international. Then people started copying it, ridiculing it and doing all sorts of things with it. And that’s really when the phenomenon began. It was in December, so a perfect Christmas present. That wasn’t until 2005 when a reporter called Susie Steiner from the Guardian did a little one-page feature, showing the Keep Calm poster as one of her favourite things. For the next two years it was a huge local and regional hit, but not a national hit. She’s a very practical person, and from then on we started making more. I suggested we make copies but Mary said: “No, it’ll spoil the purity.” She went away for a week’s holiday, so I secretly got 500 copies made. The next thing we found was that customers wanted to buy it. I liked it straight away and showed it to my wife Mary – she had it framed and put up in the shop.

I first found the poster in 2000, folded up at the bottom of a box of books we had bought at an auction. View image in fullscreen An earlier poster in the series, from 1939.

Keep calm but carry on