Return to London 2

Our second full day in London was largely taken up by our visit to the Chuchill War Rooms, situated under Whitehall.

We started as always with a coffee just near the War Rooms. As we left the cafe, a policeman rode up on his motor bike blowing a whistle, then another and before we knew it the intersection we were standing at was blocked off. Then a securty car came through, then a shiny black car followed with Princess Anne and presumably her daughter in the back seat. Then she was gone. The police opened up the intersection and everybody got on with it. Only in London.

This is not the place to go into a lengthy treatment of WS, but a few thoughts. Churchill is a complex character. He was brilliant, super intelligent I think, an extremely hard worker, a determined man, a writer, a painter, a man who had an eye to history ("we are all worms, but I think I am a glow worm"), devoted to his wife Clementine (and the only person by whom he could be pushed around), a brilliant orator, a flawed tactician, a formidable politician, and I think a man who'd pondered long on his mistakes.

The Dardanelles Campaign (Gallipoli to the ANZACS) in WWI was an unmitigated disaster, badly thought through from the start, both strategically and tactically, ending in the deaths of over 130,000 men, including more than 8700 Australians.

Churchill was an aristocrat. His grandfather was the Duke of Marlborough, and his father was the Duke's fourth son, Lord Randolph Churchill, also an aggressive Tory politician and someone whom I presume Winston felt he had to live up to. Churchill did not receive the love and affection of doting parents. He was raised by a nanny and packed off to boarding school when the time came. Psychologically speaking, that is all fertile ground for an overachiever and an individual with an 'unrelenting standards' schema embedded. Maybe just the kind of person you want to take on a ruthless megalomanic bent on world domination.

So, as they say, "cometh the hour, cometh the man". Churchill WAS the right man to take on Hitler, as he never ever trusted Hitler's words of reassurance in the early years, and his own determination and resolve ever came to the fore, as can be heard in his wartime speeches, some of them made from his bedroom in the War Rooms which we saw. He seemed to know where Hitler was headed. And said so.

The Churchill War Rooms are well-laid out. They are far below the surface with concrete slabs poured over their ceilings to shield those beneath from the unrelenting bombs falling on London (see the tally sheet in pics).

They lived down there with conditioned air and prosecuted the war effort from those rooms. It was a fascinating and well-run self-guided tour which we enjoyed thoroughly, although Churchill's Dardanelles Campaign didn't get a huge mention, one small section, and a comment, "I am finished" referring to his political career, nor did the rape of India get much of a coverage, as Churchill did not want India to go the way of the other colonies and proclaim independence, the end of the British Empire as he saw it.

A walk down Whitehall followed, a treatment of an errant little toe, and a walk past Buckingham Palace on the way to a pub for a well-earned drink. Why not!Read more