The comprehensive rationing system established in Britain under the control of the Ministry of Food (MoF) during the Second World War promoted food as one of the most important sites of connection between individual Britons and the State. As such, the government was keen to publicise the work of the MoF, not only to instruct British consumers as to the intricacies of the food control system, but also to use the communal connotations of rationing to help in the formulation of a sense of collective Britishness. Using radio, newspapers and cinema to foreground food as an integral element of the wartime British experience, the MoF encouraged Britons to understand their diet not only in communal terms but also as an integral element of the war effort. Further, the creation of numerous works canteens and state-subsidised British Restaurants promoted public dining to an unprecedented extent, but in such a way as to spotlight the benefits that resulted from such communalism to both the individual and the State. However, whilst films such as Eating Out with Tommy Trinder (1941) and Millions Like Us (1943) sought to advance an image of idyllic and idealised gastronomic interdependency, other films were released which opposed the dominant collective ethos. Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), for example, used images of sensual indulgence and unrestricted consumption to explore the continued importance and lure of individualism, thereby demonstrating the limits of the appeal of the collective. Yet whilst the critique of the collective evident in these Gainsborough films points to the tensions generated by a State-administered diet – as part of a wider State-directed existence – such films also point to the prominent position that food and the politics of consumption enjoyed as elements of British wartime culture.