‘A Temporarily Vanished Civilisation’: Ice Cream, Confectionery and Wartime Cinema-Going.

The article examines ways in which motion picture audiences, and the cinema-going experience as a whole, in Great Britain were impacted by the country's involvement in World War II. Particular focus is paid to British government regulations which banned the consumption of ice cream and rationed the production of sweets, such as chocolates and confectionery foods, as part of austerity measures to fund the war effort. It chronicles the history of the consumption of food as part of the cinema-going experience in both pre-war and wartime Great Britain, examines how confectionery companies were influenced by the Ministry of Food's (MoF) regulations, and explains how watching films served as an escape for citizens during wartime.