Review: Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum located in Southwark has, so far, been one of the best cultural locations I have had the privilege to visit in London. As with most museums and galleries in London the building is majestic and old, however; it is located off the beaten path of the central city and has a calm and surreal gardens and park surrounding its setting. Out front of the building are two 15 ton naval guns, the largest built for a British war ship, that take the main focal point of your arrival at the museum. As you walk up to the entrance, cannons pointing straight at you, you can already feel the impact this museum is going to have on you.



As soon as you walk inside you are immediately hit visually with a vast array of military vehicles on the floor, field guns, cannons, and airplanes hanging from the ceiling. The museum possesses quite an impressive collection of well preserved artifacts. They range from the more common tanks and guns used throughout the First and Second World Wars and beyond, to the more rare including the actual tank Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery used to scout positions during the Nazi defeat at El Almeain during the Second World War. The museum also boasts a healthy range of British devices as well as those belonging to friends and foes. There are many Nazi tanks and guns (all evilness aside the Nazi war machine produced some of the most revolutionary military machinery the world had ever seen and it is an impressive sight to behold), American tanks and Jeeps, and even an Argentine anti-aircraft gun used during the Falklands War. In short, the museum actively works towards showing artifacts from all sides of conflicts and not just sticking to its own. Some noteworthy elements to the main floor for me included an actual V2 rocket from Nazi Germany which literally dominates the entire room and is quite imposing, as well as the remains of an exploded car from a car bomb in Baghdad in March, 2007.



As you descend into the bowels of the museum you begin an actual trip through time from the moment the First World War started and you stop for nothing (except perhaps a pee break). The museum provides cabinet after cabinet after cabinet of uniforms, flags, medals, documents, weapons, and so much more from every aspect of the wars. I have never seen anything like it in my life and this museum provides one of the most comprehensive representations of every major military conflict since the First World War. The spaces are organized in a way that you can easily glide from one to another and follow the events and main aspects of each conflict efficiently. In fact, the extreme organization of the entire exhibit seems almost macabre when juxtaposed with the chaos of the very conflicts they represent.


Following the two major exhibits (the World Wars) the museum also has an impressive trip through conflicts afterwards. The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Yom Kippur War, and The Gulf War are many that we as Canadians are familiar with. However, they also hit very close to home with areas dedicated to the Falklands War (between Britain and Argentina) and the battles of independence in Ireland and the Troubles that came as a result. In all, the major exhibits in the museum are a spectacular sight to behold and a treasure trove of understanding for conflicts in our past that have had a continuing effect on our future.


Besides these major exhibits, there are also many other exhibits to be explored in the Imperial War Museum. I was personally heart-wrenched travelling through the Children in War exhibit. This area provided quite an eye-opening experience of the children in the Second World War in Britain. They had to undergo air raid drills, gas mask fittings, and eventually the majority of them were displaced to the country to get them out of the cities and out of harm’s way. There are letters, drawings, quotations, and more that give you their point of view as these events are raging around them. It was incredibly moving to really be a part of how life went on at the home front during this war. It also is a true testimony to how hard the British fought, right down to the last civilian, to not give in to the enemy.


The “Secret War” exhibit was a small and fun part of the museum as well. This exhibit focuses on espionage during not only the World Wars but all the way to the present. The first part of the exhibit you notice is dedicated to the glorification of espionage, mainly in the form of James Bond, and it explains that this is not necessarily a true to light statement of how these departments worked. You go through a description of MI5 and MI6 as well as other areas in the Ministry of Defence for Britain and what their objectives are. The halls themselves were quite different from the other areas of the museum. Very smooth wood floors and smart, modern signage and cabinets…they basically exude the very essence of what you would expect from a secret agent themselves. Although short, this was quite a neat addition to the main parts of the museum.


I didn’t have the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery or the Holocaust exhibits on the upper floors though I truly look forward to spending the time to truly appreciate what I can only expect are extremely well done exhibits. The museum also boasted many different temporary exhibits that cost a ticket price. Although the entrances provided a welcome amount of colour (particularly the “Ministry of Food” exhibit) to the rather monochromatic main foyers, I was not interested enough in the topics to spend money seeing them.


The museum also boasts quite the souvenir shop as well. The is an extremely comprehensive library of books on different conflicts, many different trinkets and toys, models, reprints of historical documents, and more. As a teacher some of these might come in handy and I will definitely return to go through them (especially the reprinted documents) more thoroughly later on.

In conclusion, if you didn’t already get it from my writing, I highly recommend visiting this museum. Although this provides an excellent knowledge base for any citizen, as a teacher I couldn’t be happier that such a place exists. I relish the opportunity to one day bring a class of students to this museum to teach them about the different wars and conflicts that have plagued our past. The ability to take history out of the pages of a textbook, or the screen of a computer and literally put it in the hands of a student is unprecedented and makes the learning experience that much more valuable for the student. The museum does an excellent job not to glorify the wars but to show them for what they were in factual form. The museum becomes a tool in itself to allow students to learn about where we have been and infer how we can use this information to help where we are going…the very essence of history itself.