To the new Second World War gallery at the Imperial War Museum. And it’s really rather good. The previous WW2 ‘experience’ in the museum focussed on ‘hinge’ points during the war, giving not a comprehensive overview of the conflict, but using artefacts from the collection to look at turning points such as D-Day, Dunkirk, the […]
If you should come into the Abbey through the West Door and into the nave, you will walk over the memorial to Sir Winston Churchill, but everyone, whether commoner or Queen, walks around the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. This is the last resting place of a British soldier, “known only to God” and is a commemoration of British […]
A project I’m working on to map locations in London associated with Winston Churchill – very much a work in progress! Please suggest others that you feel are appropriate. You can zoom in to the map and click on any of the stars to find a brief description, and sometime a photograph or a link […]
My Instagram Live talk from today about the Cabinet Room in the Central War Rooms and how it was used in WW2. “This is the room from which I shall direct the war” said Winston Churchill in May 1940. Click on ‘play’ to hear about the set up, the atmosphere, the tense meetings and arguments […]
During the war the London County Council surveyors chronicled the devastation caused by enemy bombing on the capital. Hand colouring street level OS maps, they plotted the buildings damaged; generally speaking, the darker the colour, the more the devastation – black was “total destruction”, purple “damaged beyond repair”, right through to yellow “blast damage: minor in nature”.
75 years ago George Orwell, the author of 1984 wrote, “as I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me”. He was talking about the Blitz, the WW2 bombing campaign by the German airforce that attempted to destroy London’s industry and infrastructure and shatter the morale of the population. Between September […]
