The Ministry of Information (MOI), headed by the Minister of Information, was a United Kingdom government department created briefly at the end of the First World War and again during the Second World War. Located in Senate House at the University of London during the 1940s, it was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda. The MOI was dissolved in March 1946, with its residual functions passing to the Central Office of Information (COI); which was itself dissolved in December 2011 due to the reforming of the organisation of government communications. First World War Before the Lloyd George War Cabinet was formed in 1917, there was no full centralised coordination of public information and censorship. Even under the War Cabinet, there were still many overlapping departments involved. The Admiralty, War Office and Press Committee (AWOPC) had been formed in 1912 as a purely advisory body, chaired initially by the Secretary of the Admiralty Sir Graham Greene, the press having agreed to self-censor accordingly in matters of defence and secret intelligence. When war was declared, other newly formed departments overlapped with it and with each other. These included the British Board of Film Censors for films, the Propaganda Bureau for overseas information and propaganda (to counter the existing German equivalent), the National War Aims Committee for internal information and propaganda, the Neutral Press Committee dealing with neutral countries, and the Press Bureau (absorbing but not totally replacing many of the AWOPC functions and practices, albeit with much wider focus). The Propaganda Bureau, situated in Wellington House and chaired by Charles Masterman, opened in 1914 and recruited 25 well-known authors for its work, including John Buchan, but in 1917 it was re-formed into the Department of Information under Buchan, with Masterman retaining responsibility for books, pamphlets, photographs and war paintings. Later that year that department was renamed as a ministry and placed initially under the then Minister without Portfolio, Sir Edward Carson, and subsequently in early 1918 under a senior press figure, Lord Beaverbrook. This was widely perceived and criticised, in politics and the press, as an excessive attempt by Lloyd George to control the press, as was political use of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. Wrangling between different interests continued for the remainder of the war and even afterwards, the Press Bureau becoming the main focus of discontent and negotiation between owners/editors and ministers. The Press Bureau