Humphrey Jennings's celebrated Second World War film Listen to Britain (1942) relates to listening in at least three, closely integrated ways. In the first place, the film's title serves as an exhortation to its viewers to ‘listen’ to its subject-matter: war-time Britain, as its people go about their business in a more or less normal and (so the film seeks to persuade us) good-humoured way. In the second place, by depicting this subject matter, the film itself ‘listens’, thus answering its own exhortation and embodying its title. And in the third place, the film depicts listening in a more conventional sense, as enacted by those it represents: for instance, workers listening to music played over tannoys in their factory; a group listening to someone accompanying her own singing on the piano. In one such scene, Jennings documents a performance by the orchestra of the Central Band of HM Royal Air Force and the pianist Myra Hess at the National Gallery in London – one of many famous concerts staged at lunch-time in that venue throughout the war. As the music plays, the camera moves amongst the audience, revealing different auditory ‘styles’: rapt, amused and so on. This, the film suggests, is what the British people in a time of war are like: not fretful desolates (though doubtless, Jennings could have found evidence for this if he chose), but calm, collected aesthetes.