The Key to the Countryside – Eight Gorgeous Shell Adverts from the mid-1950s

From the 1920s and into the 1950s the Shell Oil Company produced some extraordinarily wonderful advertising posters and some say the most beautiful Britain has ever seen. Looking at these examples from the mid-fifties it’s difficult to argue. The adverts seem to give a view of Britain as a lost rural idyl but they advertised not only petrol and oil but motoring in general and where it good take you – the exhilarating pleasure and joyous freedom of the countryside.