February - The Churchill War Rooms

It's February! And so far so good on the "One-Blog-a-Month" Resolution.

I have just finished reading Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life, a considerable portion of which takes place in London during the Blitz. It just so happens that this month’s venue of choice was the Churchill War Rooms, and it must be said that each experience heightened the other considerably.

The British attitude of a “stiff upper lip” was never so tested as it was during the Blitz, and the courageously “Keep Calm and Carry On” response of Brits in the 1940s is deeply ingrained in our image of ourselves as a nation. Both in Atkinson’s novel, and in many works from the time – such as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love - one important theme is the idea that getting oneself to safety by leaving the UK during the war was tantamount to betraying the nation.

And the Cabinet War Rooms were built with that in mind. No British Prime Minister would flee to the countryside while bombs were falling on London. They would remain in the thick of it, in a bunker built to keep those in charge of the country alive while they got on with fighting the second terrible war of the century.

In 1936, the Air Ministry posited that, should war break out and the enemy embark on an aerial bombing of London, it could result in up to 200,000 casualties a week. Under these circumstances, it was thought that key government offices would be better scattered away from the centre of the city though – as someone quite rightly pointed out – it might not be great for morale if the PM was seen scurrying out of London as soon as war was declared. Instead they decided to take proceedings underground, beginning work on a temporary emergency government centre in the basement of the New Public Offices building in 1938.

This work involved soundproofing, adding ventilation, installing communications, and reinforcing the basement, which included adding a 5-feet-thick layer of concrete known as “the Slab”. The War Rooms became fully operational in August 1939, a week before Britain declared war on Germany, but are most associated with Churchill, who didn’t arrive until May 1940. The Cabinet room he described as “the room from which I will direct the war”, and this he certainly did, holding 115 Cabinet meetings there until the German V-weapon bombing campaign came to an end in 1945.

Who knew Andrew Lloyd Webber worked at the Churchill War Rooms?

Along with the Cabinet Room, the Map Room was the most important room in the facility, constantly in use and manned 24-hours a day by naval, army, and air force officers. There were rooms for typists and switchboard operators, and the Transatlantic Telephone Room where Churchill could talk to President Roosevelt over a secure line, through the SIGSALY code-scrambling encrypted telephone installed in the basement of Selfridges. There were also kitchens, Churchill’s private dining room, dormitories for staff, and private bedrooms for officers and ministers.

But many of the men and women who worked at the War Rooms every day did not sleep there, instead making their way home at the end of the day and back in again every morning, like a regular 9-5 job. The droves of these day-to-day typists and switchboard operators were the inspiration behind this week’s outfit. The women who would spend evenings huddled in basements and on Tube platforms while their homes were blown to bits, and then would get up the next day and head in to work as usual.

My interpretation of their daily uniform is – of course – a fairly loose one. Not sure these silver shoes would have stood up well to the rubble-laden London streets, but nothing says 1940s like a good old tea dress. The beret felt suitably wartime – though I imagine red might have been considered a bit flashy. Still, walking down along past the Treasury building in my tea dress and my lace up shoes, it wasn’t difficult to imagine myself another typist heading underground for wartime work.

Walking through the War Rooms’ small corridors, you cannot avoid imagining what it must have been like to have spent day after day, evening after evening, trapped underground in hot, smelly, cramped conditions. The “underground nucleus of Britain’s war effort” was not built to be pleasant – Churchill almost always opted to sleep above ground at number 10, deciding to face bombs rather than spend the night safe in his airless, windowless chamber. But the museum, which has been part of the Imperial War Museum since 1984, has also skilfully captured the positive aspects of the War Rooms – the camaraderie, the feeling of security, and that tenacious Blitz-time spirit of the Brits who worked there.

The Churchill War Rooms details

Opening times = Every Day, 9:30am-6pm

Admission = £19 for Adults, £9.50 for children

Closest Tube station = Westminster

Coat - M&S
Dress - Lindy Bop "Amelia" dress
Shoes - ASOS
Beret - M&S