AN image of York used to lure American tourists to spend more money in Britain more than 80 years ago is going up for auction.

This poster, which captures the Minster and Bootham Bar, was one of many distributed in the USA and British dominions as part of a tourism drive backed by Winston Churchill to encourage more tourists to come to the UK.

Recently, the largest single grouping of the posters, with images from all over Britain, was discovered near Boston, Massachusetts, and will now be auctioned in Dorset on June 21.

A spokesman for Onslows Auctions said: “Just months before the stock market crash of 1929, the Travel Association of Britain and Northern Ireland was founded by Lord Waldorf Astor and Winston Churchill to increase the amount of American money spent in the United Kingdom by tourists. With offices in New York and Paris, this joint government and private association managed to achieve substantial success in increasing local tourism income in spite of the Depression.

“In the late 1930s the Travel Association hired the best photographers to document the scenes of Great Britain including Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Photographers such as Robert Moyes Adam, whose collection of works is archived at the University of St. Andrews, along with other notable artists such as Val Doone and J Dixon-Scott photographed the historic, scenic and cultural sites throughout the British Isles.”

For more information about the auction, visit onslows.co.uk