In this article Anselm Heinrich argues for a renewed interest in and critical investigation of theatre in Britain during the Second World War, a period neglected by researchers despite the radical changes in the cultural landscape instigated during the war. Concentrating on CEMA (the Council for Encouragement of Music and the Arts) and the introduction of subsidies, the author discusses and evaluates the importance and effects of state intervention in the arts, with a particular focus on the demands put on theatre and its role in society in relation to propaganda, nation-building, and education. Anselm Heinrich is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Entertainment, Education, Propaganda: Regional Theatres in Germany and Britain between 1918 and 1945 (2007), and with Kate Newey and Jeffrey Richards has co-edited a collection of essays on Ruskin, the Theatre, and Victorian Visual Culture (2009). Other research interests include émigrés from Nazi-occupied Europe, contemporary German theatre and drama, and national theatres.