There’s something almost unrelentingly — er — solemn about visiting the Cabinet War Rooms, about a stone’s throw away from the Houses of Parliament. It’s sort of like imagining the Diefenbunker, relocated to 240 Sparks.

Mind you, it’d be absolutely foolish to compare Sir Winston Churchill to John George Diefenbaker. For all the Chief’s virtues and longevity (a point which does favourably compare with Sir Winston), he simply didn’t do as much to merit greatness in the eyes of the world. Certainly not when compared with the Lion.

The Cabinet War Rooms is a unique place to tour, justifying its expense with thoroughness and thoughtfulness in presentation. The price entitles you to a cell-phone like device that’s used to narrate the entire experience, with a male voice sounding suspiciously like one of those middle-aged British actors you see in PBS murder mysteries.

Sometimes it can be a pretty entertaining experience. Because they made a very serious attempt to recreate the “look and feel” of the War Rooms as they would have been in 1940, there are some signage and other materials that require quite a bit of explanation. “You’ll see a sign in that passage telling you to ‘turn off that light,’” says the narrator. “You can ignore that. It’s just a warning during a time of air raids, so that the German bombers won’t have a light to target at night.” Or: “On that post beside the chalkboard, you’ll see something like a doorbell beside a set of loose wires. That’s actually a wall-mounted cigarette lighter. You pressed the button, the wires would glow and you could light your cigarette.”

Of bigger interest, though, is the Churchill Museum located inside the War Rooms, completely dedicated to the life and times of Sir Winston. This is an impressive bit of public scholarship, and it doesn’t pull its punches when discussing Sir Winston’s foibles and faults. (For example, there was a time during his political career when Sir Winston self-identified as a big-L Liberal, in favour of such measures as the minimum wage. He also supported King Edward in his affair with Wallis Simpson.)

There’s quite a lot of interactivity, certainly when compared with our own Canadian War Museum: lots of touch-sensitive displays, recordings of Churchill’s speeches set off by a body proximity sensor, and so on. School-age children learning history could learn a lot from stuff like that.

The War Rooms are a branch of the Imperial War Museum, and I visited the main building this morning. Most of its focus was on the 20th century of warfare, which surprised me a bit until I realized that World Wars I and II were simply the most analyzed and archaeologic of all Britain’s battles; the 20th century battlefield is the one with the most relevance towards the 21st.

I went through an cartoon exhibit on World War I trench warfare. Yes, I said cartoon: it was, strictly speaking, aimed at 10-12 year old students trying to learn, so the cartoons added a sense of fun, a sugar coating for the bitter medicine of learning. A touch-sensitive display on the floor featured cartoon rats scurrying about; stomp hard enough (an apparent pastime of the troops in trenches) and the rats turn into bloody puddles. Nice, friendly stuff to keep the kids interested, but I’ll bet you won’t see that sort of thing in our war museum.

Tomorrow: a look at the Maritime Museum and Greenwich. With maybe a peep at Baker Street if there’s time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 16:00 and is filed under Explorations, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.