Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
taskmaster who worked 18-hour days and was brutal to his staffers (who deeply respected
him nevertheless).
A long touch-the-screen timeline lets you zero in on events in his life from birth
(November 30, 1874) to his first appointment as prime minister in 1940. Many of the
items on display—such as a European map divvied up in permanent marker, which
Churchill brought to England from the postwar Potsdam Conference—drive home the re-
markable span of history this man lived through. Imagine: Churchill began his military
career riding horses in the cavalry and ended it speaking out against the proliferation
of nuclear armaments. It's all the more amazing considering that, in the 1930s, the man
who would become my vote for greatest statesman of the 20th century was considered a
washed-up loony ranting about the growing threat of fascism.
Eating:
Get your rations at the Switch Room café (until 17:00, in the museum), or for
a nearby pub lunch, try Westminster Arms (food served downstairs, on Storey's Gate, a
couple of blocks south of the museum).
