I learned more about Churchill too – from his childhood, exploits as a journalist during the Boer War, through to his writing career after the war.
The Cabinet War Rooms
I went here with a friend a few weeks ago, and it was really atmospheric to try and imagine just what life would have been like here during the war. The room the wartime Cabinet met in sits cheek by jowl with bedrooms, a kitchen, rooms for private secretaries and typists, and, standing out, the feminine bedroom of Clementine Churchill. It’s the small details that humanise this place – the mousetrap in the kitchen, the sugar rations secreted away and found in a drawer long after the war was over. Then there are the letters – recent ones from Michael Heseltine asking then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for funding to open the rooms, and the starkly worded letter to citizens of the Channel Islands setting out why they were being strategically left to their fate.
