A conflicted walk through London’s Imperial War Museum

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to London

I can still recall a boyhood visit to London’s Imperial War Museum some 50 years ago. The first world war tank was like one in my collection of plastic toy soldiers; the models of warships were scaled-up, detailed versions of those I had attempted to build at home; but best of all was the real Supermarine Spitfire — the single-seat fighter aircraft that starred in my favourite film at the time: Battle of Britain. With hindsight, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that my reaction then was one of delight and excitement.

Today, those same feelings surface upon entering the museum’s spacious atrium — developed from a central courtyard in 1989 and housing the institution’s impressive larger artefacts. But it’s an experience tempered with sorrow, contextualised with details of conflicts that Britain has been involved in from 1914 onwards, their effects on both world history and the lives of everyday people.

A visit can be challenging. The stories of loss and suffering are difficult to digest, particularly when I think about how many of those tragedies have been added since my childhood. But this also makes visiting all the more important.

This walk guides you through the main galleries. From the atrium, the first rooms you enter deal with the first world war — the reason for the museum being founded in 1917, in the midst of the conflict. Excellent audiovisual displays tackle a subject that I’ve always found baffling: the formation of the archaic alliances — more reminiscent of 19th- rather than 20th-century geopolitics, and naively intended to maintain the European power balance — and their subsequent collapse.

However, these displays soon give way to the new horrors of industrial-age warfare. Examples of artillery and gas shells, tanks and aerial and automatic weapons showcase the technology that came of age during the first world war, taking a devastating toll on combatants and civilians alike. Both my grandfather and his brother were medical orderlies on the Western Front, and my thoughts inevitably turn to what they must have seen and endured.

Up one floor, on terraces overlooking the atrium, “Witnesses to War” is a collection of larger objects relating to the second world war and shaping its outcome. A Sherman tank, for example, represents the might of US industry that was harnessed for the war effort.

Meanwhile, other items — an Avro Lancaster bomber fuselage, a German anti-aircraft gun and the filter system from a London apartment block’s air-raid shelter — indicate how air power became a dominating influence on events.

When preparing this guide, I canvassed friends for family stories of WWII. All shared tales of their relatives’ involvement. In a similar manner, the main second world war Galleries describe the conflict and resulting death and suffering through both the hardware on show and the stories of individuals told on accompanying display panels. Items such as forged papers from a prisoner-of-war camp, a helmet belonging to a London air raid warden, and a German Enigma cipher machine are accompanied by written descriptions of the forger, civil defence volunteer and Bletchley Park codebreaker connected to them.

On the second floor is an example of the museum’s storytelling at its very finest — and most harrowing. The Holocaust Galleries, opened in 2021, lead you step by step through an unfolding nightmare. Commencing with photographic snapshots of the everyday lives of Jewish people in mid-20th-century Europe, visitors are told, with stark clarity — via film, photography, documents and artefacts — how the rise of Nazi extremism and the promotion and pursuit of antisemitism led to genocide on an unprecedented scale. The content is highly affecting and the museum recommends that the galleries are only visited by those aged 14 and over.

Other exhibits on floor two examine post-1945 conflicts. As someone who remembers the cold war nuclear stand-off in the 1970s and ’80s, the displayed atomic artefacts stir unsettling memories. An innocuous-looking telephone terminal from Maidstone police station, for instance, reveals a sinister ulterior purpose: it would have received the warning to trigger the sirens signalling imminent Armageddon. The fact that the terminal used the same circuits as TIM — the telephone speaking-clock service — adds a darkly comic touch.

A scale model of a section of the Berlin Wall, however, evokes a more positive response. Even in these troubled times, it’s a reminder that the wall, once such a seemingly immutable symbol of east-west division, is now rapidly becoming a distant memory.

Further exhibits — ranging from a captured Taliban motorcycle and a wall mosaic of Saddam Hussein to an Argentine anti-aircraft gun and a Wheelbarrow bomb-disposal robot — represent the British forces’ role in distant conflicts including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Falkland Islands, and, closer to home, combating sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Finally, climbing the steps to the Lord Ashcroft Gallery on floor five reveals a collection of over 250 Victoria and George Crosses — the UK’s highest awards for bravery. The stories that accompany each medal are extraordinary.

Later this year, there will be an additional gallery to include in the walk. The museum’s extensive art collection — containing more than 20,000 works by the likes of Paul and John Nash, Laura Knight and William Orpen, and currently dotted throughout the exhibits — is one of the reasons I’ve been a regular visitor over the years. From November, it will be brought together in the Blavatnik Galleries — a permanent, dedicated display of artwork that will provide yet more food for thought.

Imperial War Museum London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ. Open daily, 10am–6pm. (Directions)

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