A closer look at familiar Dunkirk images that are often repeated with the wrong story attached.
Some wartime images travel further than their original captions. This page gathers two recurring examples where striking pictures have been used as Dunkirk images, even though the context points somewhere else.
Royal Mail made a commemorative stamp set for Operation Dynamo, but the 60p stamp is not a Dunkirk evacuation scene. It is a cropped version of an Upper Thames Patrol review in early August 1940.
The first image is often used as if it depicts Dunkirk. A second angle shows the same scene inside the film studio at Ealing, and the third picture shows the image used on an official poster for the film Dunkirk. It is a powerful staged image, but it should not be treated as documentary evidence of the real evacuation.
These additional production and poster images reinforce the film-studio context around the familiar Dunkirk imagery, with cameras, crew, extras and publicity artwork all showing how the scene was staged and promoted.
