The Churchill Museum Has Now Joined the List of London Must-Sees

In a city whose major museums are among the largest and most impressive of all such places, the Churchill War Rooms were always a compelling exhibit but a secondary one. Why go to a narrow, twenty-yard-long attraction (the War Rooms) when the British Museum had the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles, the Victoria & Albert Museum had the Leonardo da Vinci notebooks and the first folio of Shakespeare's plays, and the National Gallery had more acknowledged masterworks of art than any other collection on earth?

And so, most visitors to London visited the War Rooms virtually as an afterthought, for an interesting, quick contact with one limited  aspect of World War II. Those War Rooms in a fairly small underground space where Churchill and his cabinet directed the British war effort, were not a real museum but simply the offices where the British military and its civilian chief used telephone communications to issue their directives, all the while protected by cave-like concrete walls from German bombers flying overhead. Because it was a real-life attraction, it provided an undeniable experience, but it provided no real competition to the top highlights of a London visit.

Few people, I dare say, were aware that the War Rooms occupied only a small portion of their underground area, or that the remaining space could be turned into a more spacious museum devoted to the life of an outstanding figure of the twentieth century: Winston Churchill. And now, with the recent completion of a Churchill Museum in that underground space, the resulting exhibition is one that deserves to be listed among the really outstanding attractions of London. Friends urged me in the strongest terms, prior to a recent trip to London, not to miss the Churchill Museum, which is visited on a single ticket for admission to both the War Rooms and the Museum.

The museum begins its story with a young man born into an aristocratic English family, urged by his parents to excel in all areas.  It tells of his early school failures, of his repeated (and ultimately successful) efforts to enter Sandhurst, the British military academy. And it follows his exploits, his capture in the Boer War as a prisoner of war, his escape, his authorship of best-selling books about these adventures, of his entering Parliament and subsequent dramatic political exploits, of the World War I defeats that temporarily stunted his career, and of his decade-long attempt from 1929 to 1939 to persuade the British to rearm against the threat posed by Adolf Hitler.

And it tells this story not in dry written placards, but via the most exciting new interactive electronic devices, that shepherd your understanding of his development year-by-year and sometimes even month-by-month through his dramatic early life. The tale is told in film and spoken recordings, with slide shows and commentary about one of the most exciting lives ever lived.

And then you reach World War II and Churchill's ascension to being Prime Minister of Great Britain and forming a coalition government to guide Britain's heroic, lonely battle again the Nazi hordes. Here, the electronics are even more advanced: one sees films of key moments in his and Britain's wartime history; one hears recordings of many of his famous speeches relating to battles won and lost; one follows him—and his opponents—through victories and defeats captured in the most compelling newsreels made during the pressures of those events. You witness details of the alliance he forged with Franklin Roosevelt, and their ultimate joint invasion of the continent of Europe  One experiences victory followed by the defeat of Churchill's political party, his eventual regaining of the Prime Minister's role, and the last years of his life, all told in interactive visual and auditory devices that are the best and most modern of contemporary presentations.

Before you know it, several hours have passed, and you have become familiar with one of the most remarkable personages of recent times. You react emotionally to his courage, and to his powers of persuasion as he encouraged the British people to reject the offers of surrender from Hitler's Germany and to fight on alone against the awesome military might of Germany. You are literally awe-struck by the immense odds against which he successfully fought.

Throughout the visit, and whether you share Churchill's political policies or not, you have learned a great deal, and have felt the tension of those times, and the memory of your visit remains strong and vivid.

On your next trip to London, by all means take in the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert, the National Gallery, the Tower of London, and all the other familiar attractions.  But give equal time to the Churchill Museum, which was a highlight of my own recent visit.