A brief general history of the UK paint industry: Part 5. 1939 and the early post‐war years Available to Purchase

The time of the meaningless bit of paper had come and gone and, with a murderous dictator on the rampage, the great Churchill was called upon to truck with another unsavoury character in the east and pledge national assets for more democratic help via the New World. In anticipation of a further reckoning with Germany, trade generally had begun to pick up by 1932 and the paint industry received commensurate benefit. Rearmament took up any slack and one assumes brought to an end the deterioration in turnover of such companies as Nobel Chemical Finishes. Indeed, the general atmosphere in paint company boardrooms was one of smiles tempered with a certain anxiety regarding the international situation. Then, the inevitable happened, and the whole degrading business of war had to be re‐enacted in the broader interest of stifling tyranny.