Stewart Duncan’s “An Excellent Piece of Propaganda”

PhD candidate Stewart Duncan’s article “‘An Excellent Piece of Propaganda’: The British Council’s Use of Choirs as Cultural Diplomacy in the 1930s” was published in the January 2022 issue of The Musical Quarterly. Congratulations Stewart!

His article focuses on the anxiety the British government felt in the interwar period upon realizing that other countries, such as Italy and Germany, were making cultural inroads in Central and Eastern Europe, and how the British Council engaged in cultural diplomacy through musical propaganda, primarily using touring English choirs, which were viewed by the Council as emblematic of national identity. Stewart concentrates on the three choirs sent on tours by the Council–the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge; the New English Singers; and the Fleet Street Choir–and the values these ensembles embodied.

Read Stewart’s article here (note that Oxford Academic requires a log-in).