An electroluminescent display of the type having a switchable electroluminescent (EL) material backlight (16) mounted behind a mask (13) defining the information to be displayed, in which display the mask is constructed as a layer of physically-stabilised Liquid Crystal (LC) material (14) switchable to define the information to be displayed; and the LC mask and the EL backlight are constructed as a single entity. The LC mask may be directly formed on the EL backlight, or there may be an insulating interlayer (10) between LC mask and EL backlight. The LC mask and EL backlight may be held between a common pair of electrodes (11, 20).