Politics, propaganda and art: The case of two ‘Worcestershire Lads’

The relationship between politics, propaganda and art at any given time is, as Oscar Wilde observed of truth, never pure and rarely simple. In a recent article, that relationship was examined from one standpoint by N.B. Penny, who investigated the Whig cult of Fox in nineteenth-century sculpture. The purpose of this article is to explore another aspect of the problem by looking in tum at the nature of Stanley Baldwin's public image, and at the mirror which was held up to that image in the novels of his Worcestershire neighbour, Francis Brett Young.