Imperial War Museum, London

- darkometer rating: 6 (formerly 7) -

An eminent war museum in London, Great Britain, in fact one of the leading such institutions in the world. Originally commemorating only the Great War (i.e. WW1) it has since been expanded and repeatedly reworked to cover more or less all conflicts that Britain has been involved in since then and (almost) up to the present day. In addition there’s also a substantial separate Holocaust section.

I’ve visited this museum several times over the course of some four decades, most recently in January 2025, and have seen many changes over that period, some for the better, some not so much so.

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More background info: The Imperial War Museum (IWM) is THE premier war museum in Great Britain – a country which isn't exactly short of war-related museums. But this one is the "mother" of them all. Today it also has several branches in other parts of the country, as well as in London itself (including the Churchill War Rooms) – see combinations.

The decision to establish the museum was taken in 1917, while World War One was still raging. In its first incarnation the museum opened in 1920 at Crystal Palace, was then crammed into insufficient space in two galleries adjoining the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, before reopening in 1936 at its present location inside the central part of the former Bethlem Royal Hospital, once an infamous hospital "for the insane" (how fitting!).

The IWM's initial remit was to document and teach about the causes and consequences of "The Great War", i.e. World War One. During the even worse war that was soon to follow, WWII, the museum remained closed, and its collections were moved elsewhere for safe storage, until reopening in 1946.

Since then, its mission has been expanded to cover all conflicts that Great Britain (and/or the Commonwealth) has been involved in since 1914 and throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, including the Falklands War of 1982, the Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003 against Iraq, and military missions in Afghanistan. The Cold War also gets some coverage.

Military-related museums in Britain can often be rather on the glamorizing side (some definitely too much so for my taste), but the Imperial War Museum in London is partly an exception. OK, it also does the heroes and great nation stuff to a degree, but overall it is rather balanced, sober and informative.

The museum has evolved a lot over the years. I remember it from my first visit in the 1980s, when it was still rather old-fashioned. That had already changed dramatically by the turn of the century.

But the biggest change yet came with the WWI centenary anniversary in 2014. To coincide with that significant date, the museum underwent a massive revamp. Not only was the WWI gallery completely redesigned, but much of the rest of the museum was given an overhaul too. Most notably an all-new atrium was constructed as the centrepiece of the building.

The museum was closed for a whole year or so while all that work was in progress. But on 19 July 2014 it reopened in time to mark the centenary of the Great War.

The changes included both gains and losses. The atrium reconstruction meant that fewer large exhibits would fit in it, and so some were moved either to different sections within the museum itself or even away to outlying branches of the museum elsewhere, in particular the Polaris missile from the Cold War (a so-called “SLBM”, or 'submarine-launched ballistic missile', a type of ICBM). The largest newly added exhibit, still hanging in the air from the ceiling in the atrium, is a Hawker Harrier jump jet.

But it was the WWI gallery that was comprehensively reworked. The new exhibition, though a bit crammed full, is much more sober and historically astute compared to the old one (no more “trench experience” sound-and-light show elements and suchlike). It is also technically more state of the art (i.e. lots of interactive multimedia elements). Parts of the WWII section were also modified somewhat at that time.

Between my visit in 2015 and my latest revisit in January 2025, more changes have come about. The atrium was left mostly the same except that the V1 that used to be suspended next to its V2 counterpart has been moved and in the atrium its space is now taken up by a Japanese “Ohka” (kamikaze flying bomb – cf. Yushukan). There are also some slight changes in the WW1 section, but the most drastic more recent changes affected the Second World War Galleries and the Holocaust Galleries, both of which were completely reworked with a fundamentally different main focus (they opened in 2021). See below for more details. There are now also more shops than before, or rather the once central single shop has been split up into different locations (I presume out of commercial considerations).

What further changes are yet to come (and when) remains to be seen. But I would guess that the museum will remain as it is now (writing in 2025) for a good few more years.

What there is to see: Even before you enter the museum building, there are a couple of items on open-air display to take note of. One is a pair of gigantic WW1-era battleship gun barrels that poke up at a low angle straight in front of the museum entrance. (They're so iconic, I had to choose them for the title picture above!) The other one is a single segment of the Berlin Wall, an interestingly graffitied one, though by now a bit faded.

Once you’re inside the museum proper, and have passed the locker rooms and the first two of the museum shops, you come to the grand atrium, five storeys high and featuring some of the museum’s largest exhibits. The most prominent is probably the tall green V2 missile standing upright (partly open at the back to allow a view of the inner workings). Suspended from the ceiling next to the V2 is a Japanese “Ohka” kamikaze plane/flying bomb (cf. Yushukan) and a bit higher a Spitfire fighter, all from WWII. Hanging just under the roof is also a Hawker “Harrier” VSTOL jump jet (see below). Some objects also partially poke out from the terraces that wrap around the atrium, such as the bow of a boat, part of midget submarine or a pair of anti-aircraft guns. On the floor of the level below, Level 0, are yet more objects. Collectively all these objects are referred to here as “Witnesses to War”.

The rest of the museum is subdivided into a number of separate sections, called “Galleries” here. In theory you are free to visit them in any order you like, but chronologically it makes most sense to start downstairs at Level 0, where the First World War part is located. Before going in it’s worth taking a closer look at the remaining four “Witnesses to War” exhibits on the atrium floor:

The first one you see as you come down the stairs at the front is an old WWI-era piece of artillery. Next to in a corner by the museum cafe is a white armoured vehicle very clearly marked as “foreign press” and “TV” on all sides and on the roof. Yet it was attacked in Gaza. Placed more centrally, opposite the V2, is a shockingly mangled and scorched, rusty wreck of a car destroyed in a terrorist bombing attack in Baghdad, Iraq, in March 2007, which killed 38 people. The shock lies in the fact that you can see what the bomb did to this car and your imagination has to grapple with the thought of what it must have done to human bodies.

The Baghdad car wreck is actually a kind of art installation by Jeremy Deller (in the tradition of the “readymade”). And before being displayed here at the IWM it was shown in various locations around the USA – as a travelling exhibit to remind citizens of the ongoing quagmire left behind in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion …

The fourth object is partially hidden between the main staircase in the back of the atrium and the set of lifts beyond: a Russian T-34 tank from WWII.

The main thematic exhibition at Level 0, however, is the “First World War Galleries”. This part was completely redesigned for the centenary of the outbreak of WW1; opened in time in 2014 it has seen only minor adjustments since.

The exhibition starts with a brief overview of the run-up to the war. In what follows, a lot of emphasis is placed on the realization of what a modern, hardware-driven, industrial-scale war actually meant: “a dastardly slaughter”, as one contemporary quote put it. This is further underscored by lots of letters and diary excerpts from the front lines.

The appearance of modern means of chemical warfare is a special element here as well, in particular the German attacks with mustard gas. The obligatory display of gas masks is augmented by interesting projections and interactive screens. A particularly poignant exhibit here is that of an officer’s glove, shrunk by poison gas to half its original size, displayed inside a glass dome. Generally, there is an emphasis on smaller items, documents, letters, personal belongings. Thematically there is a certain focus on the Battle of the Somme, under the heading of “Total War”.

The largest ensemble by scale is the trench reconstruction (thankfully without any sound-and-light show elements now – unlike the rather cheesy precursor installation before 2014). This includes another invention of WWI: the British tank, as well as a Sopwith Camel biplane hanging from the ceiling overhead together with an early aerial bomb. Other large items on display include some guns, a French field gun, a naval gun and a mid-sized howitzer, as well as a number of shells of various sizes.

A particularly grim section, as was to be expected, is the one focusing on the physical and psychological damage done to soldiers, including gruesome images of disfigured faces and displays of prosthetic limbs.

The hero worship of old, on the other hand, very firmly takes a distant back seat – although there is a small section about war celebrities such as the Red Baron. One section also places a special focus on the role of women at the “home front”, e.g. in the production of munitions.

What I found particularly interesting were the displays of wartime propaganda and media appeals, e.g. those urging Australians to volunteer to fight in the war – which they did together with New Zealanders (ANZAC), even though their countries weren’t in other ways affected by that faraway war in Europe. Striking are also the German posters urging civilians to collect and donate all manner of materials, from scrap metal to rabbit furs, and even women’s hair! (The latter reminded me of the later practice of the Nazis to collect female concentration-camp inmates’ hair by force).

The WW1 exhibition finishes with a little afterthought about the outcome and implications for the future after the war.

If I were to compare the WWI exhibition at the IWM to the equivalent at the Military History Museum (HGM) in Vienna (also opened for the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War), I would say that the former fares somewhat better on the inclusion of side topics and covering the wider implications of the war, while the latter is more impressive in the large exhibits department.

Both are very similar, though, in their modern portrayal of war and the frankness with which the horrors of the Great War are placed in the foreground. On the negative side, both exhibitions suffer a bit from lack of space, the IWM more so than the HGM. By this I mean the lack of space for visitors to move around in, not that allocated to the exhibitions contents (both are extremely rich in that latter respect). Especially at the IWM it had the effect that you often have to wait for visitors ahead of you to finish their viewing of particular displays or interactive elements before you could have your turn.

Going back upstairs to Level 1, there are first several more “Witnesses to War” exhibits, now all related to WWII under the common theme of “Turning Points 1934 – 1945”. These are represented by a number of large exhibits, including the front section of a Lancaster bomber (standing for the aerial bombardment of German cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne or Dresden), a wreck of a Japanese “Zero” fighter (standing for the Pacific “theatre” of the war), a car used by Field Marshal Montgomery (standing for the northern African theatre of war) or a US “Sherman” tank (standing for the D-Day Allied landings in Normandy). Also on display are two midget submarines, an intact Italian one and a battered wreck of a British one. The Battle of Britain (see BoB Bunker) is mainly represented by the “Spitfire” fighter hanging from the ceiling in the atrium at Level 1.

The “Second World War Galleries” are home to the main topical exhibition at this level. When I visited in January 2025, I found that this section had been completely reworked since my previous visit (in 2015). In general there is now a much, much stronger focus on individual personal stories, hundreds of them, relating to all theatres of the war around the world. These personal stories are usually only a few paragraphs each, so it’s quite fragmented. The text panels about different episodes of the war are similarly simplistic, often just a paragraph or two, frequently interspersed with questions such as “why invade the Soviet Union?”, to which very short-sentence answers are provided.

A fellow blogger and friend in London once told me that he sees this change of focus as an adaptation to the shortened attention span of “generation Tik-Tok”. I wouldn’t go quite as far as that, as the exhibition is still incredibly rich in information and breadth of coverage. But I do agree that the shift of focus is now pulled further away from the actual war history and its darkest aspects.

Thematically, however, the net is cast wide. The exhibition starts with the build-up to the war, the failed appeasement attempts that did not stop Hitler, the invasions of Poland and then France, the Benelux countries as well as Denmark and Norway. Less well-known aspects are also mentioned, e.g. the British sinking of the French Navy fleet at Oran on the coast of Algeria, because it was feared these vessels could be captured by Germany after their victory in France.

Naturally, the “Blitz” (German bombing of British cities) and the subsequent Battle of Britain (see also BoB bunker) are a major topic here. The war in northern Africa is also given quite a bit of space – and with it comes one rare example of a larger artefact on display (a field gun). Otherwise exhibits are mostly smaller or no larger than the many uniforms and rifles/guns on display. In addition there’s a display of different types of landmines.

An exception, size-wise, is in the section on how civilian life in Britain was affected by the war. Here life-size reconstructions of the interior of homes still feature that I also remember from the IWM’s WWII gallery before it received its more recent makeover. So it’s not all new. The topic of rationing and the (often compulsory) recruitment of women into the arms industry and medical services is another major aspect covered. Amongst the reconstructed living rooms of the period, toys, family photos, posters and so on. Especially remarkable here is the display of a fluffy “Squander Bug” (a cartoon character used in Britain to discourage wasteful spending). This toy version has a tash like Hitler's and swastikas all over its belly – and a bullet hole in it. Apparently it was used as an air rifle practice target!

The exhibition then moves on to how WWII became a truly global war, especially with Imperial Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor and simultaneously Singapore and other Asian territories. A remarkable object on display in this context is a piece salvaged from the wreck of the battleship USS Arizona that was sunk at Pearl Harbor. This drew the USA into the war, which was to have major consequences, of course. This included at home in the USA for citizens of Japanese descent, who were forcibly interned in so-called “relocation camps”. On display is also a copy of a page from “LIFE” magazine which purports to explain how to tell Japanese enemies from Chinese allies – racially, i.e. on the basis of what’s effectively ‘eugenics’.

At the same time the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union brought a strategy of annihilation with it, directed not only at POWs but also civilians. It was also the beginning of the systematic mass murder of Jews, e.g. at Babi Yar. That way the Holocaust also receives some coverage here, outside the dedicated “Holocaust Galleries” on Level 2. Displays here also include a typical exhibit: a concentration-camp-inmate’s striped jacket.

At various points in the exhibition a particularly British element of the war effort is picked out: the recruitment of people from the various British colonies of its “Empire”!

Plenty of space is given to the Battle of the Atlantic, and an intriguing installation symbolizes the tonnages lost through sinking by U-boats by means of little model ships suspended inside a glass cabinet.

This is already part of the largest subsection of the Second World War Galleries, the one about how the war was won/lost. Aspects of this include the mass carpet-bombing of German cities by Allied bombers in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. Serving as a counterpoint of sorts is the display of a tailpiece of a German pilot’s night fighter’s tail fin with markings for the 121 British bombers shot down by him. An associated piece of statistics is that two out of every five bomber crews were lost in the bombing campaigns.

Also covered in this section are the major battles Germany lost on the ground, e.g. in Stalingrad and Kursk. Geographically the exhibition reaches the furthest with the part about the Australian (and US) successes in fighting back the Japanese in Papua New Guinea.

A small but remarkable exhibit is also a small lump of copper ore smuggled out of a mine in Taiwan by a British POW who, like so many, was forced into slave labour by the Japanese in such mines (see Kinkaseki). This is also one of the tactile exhibits, i.e. you are invited to touch the copper lump, as part of the efforts to include visually impaired visitors (also in the form of explanatory text in Braille).

Other aspects of the final stages of the war obviously include the D-Day landings of the Allies in Normandy. It’s also in this finale part of the WWII Gallery that its largest exhibit features: a V1 flying “buzz bomb”, one of Hitler’s so-called “revenge weapons” (‘Vergeltungswaffen’). Formerly on display in the atrium this is now suspended from the ceiling of the level above the Second World War Galleries (i.e. from the Holocaust Galleries, from where you can see the same object from above).

Covered too are the Allied advances through Italy as well as the surprise victory of German forces against the Allies in the Ardennes in December 1944. On display is an SS mannequin wearing camouflage clothing over the usual black SS uniform.

Yet Germany was de facto already beaten. The end of the war for the Nazis, Victory in Europe, is represented by one of the most remarkable objects in the whole museum: a battered Reich's Eagle clutching a swastika in its talons – apparently an original seized from the ruins of Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin after the unconditional surrender of Germany.

But of course the war in the Pacific against Japan carried on. The turning point here, the first ever use of an atomic bomb against Hiroshima, and three days later also Nagasaki, is duly covered. Commendably, however, the typical US narrative that this brought about the Japanese surrender is not followed in this exhibition – instead the more contemporary revised view of historians is adopted, namely that it was the Soviet invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria (in China) that finally tipped the balance and triggered the surrender.

There is one more section here namely the one about “how did the war change the world?”. Several aspects are picked out, some big and obvious, such as the onset of the atomic age and the Cold War, but also smaller and more personal ones. The latter is for example represented by a toy dog that a German POW working on a farm in Kent gave to one of the farmer family’s sons. The post-war founding of the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain is represented by a photo of the first child born under the NHS in 1948. Some effects of the post-war world order far beyond Europe are also included, such as the partition of India in 1947, coinciding with the beginning of the end of the British Empire of colonies.

After you leave the Second World War Galleries you pass a door marked “Quiet Room”. Indeed this is a brightly lit space with some armchairs and sofas set aside for “contemplation, reflection, meditation or silent prayer”. It was empty when I was there.

Next you ascend the stairs (or use the lift) to get to Level 2, whose main exhibition is“The Holocaust Galleries”. This too has been completely reworked, together with the WWII part, and in a similar fashion. Here too a shift of focus towards individual personal stories dominates the narrative. I do not mind the inclusion of personal stories, don’t get me wrong. These often make history more palpable. But I think here this has been overdone, with the effect that the actual horrors of the Holocaust, especially the Final Solution, almost drift into the background. It feels a bit sanitized.

And in one specific aspect it most definitely is sanitized: the former centrepiece of the old Holocaust exhibition at the IWM used to be a large-scale, very detailed model of the Auschwitz-Birkenau ramp, from the gatehouse to the gas chambers and crematoria. I already knew from reading this book that the model had not only been removed from the exhibition, but apparently it even was destroyed!! Given that it was the specially commissioned work of an acclaimed artist, this is nothing short of scandalous! And also unnecessary. As the author of the book suggests, instead of secretly hacking the model up they could have donated it, e.g. to the state museum Auschwitz-Birkenau itself, where there would have been ample space – and a context for it more fitting than any.

Anyway, the drastic changes to the Holocaust exhibition at the IWM prompted me to keep the previous text about the Holocaust section from this chapter before I updated and largely rewrote it, but now filed under the umbrella of ‘lost places’. This is where you can find the old, outdated text now so you can read it for comparison.

The all-new Holocaust Galleries, opened in 2021, start off with a silent intro in which projections of a photo gallery are played in a loop. The images are all of locations more or less related to the Holocaust, some directly (e.g. elements of concentration camps) others only more indirectly (e.g. vestiges of abandoned synagogues in eastern Europe). There are no explanations. Given that it’s quite a large series of images, my guess would be at least 50, it takes a long time to see them all. I did recognize a good number of the locations (though by no means all or even half), but you have to wonder what visitors not yet so well versed in the topic of the Holocaust can make of this. It’s potentially puzzling and indeed a “bottleneck”, as this book’s author also remarks.

The exhibition itself is chronologically organized in the usual fashion, i.e. starting with a brief history of anti-Semitism, the Nazis’ rise to power and their anti-Jewish ideology being slowly implemented through ever more restrictive laws, seizing of property/businesses, and increasing physical violence too. The first killings by gas in the Aktion T4 is mentioned (which the Final Solution later drew on) as are the beginning of the war, bringing ghettoization and later the mass killings through the Einsatzgruppen, the concentration camps and eventually the death camps.

As already said above, the exhibition’s narrative relies much more on personal stories of some of the six million Shoah victims in an effort to preserve the eyewitnesses’ “voices”. Commendable as that is, the full horror of the Final Solution gets a bit blurred. The darkest elements, warned about by the museum as “potentially distressing” are screens with video footage of some of the mass shootings (usually the material filmed at Skede) or of the emaciated bodies found when the camps were liberated. These are indeed quite graphic, but I think that the exhibition could be – and maybe should have been – more distressing. It’s possibly the most distressing topic there is, the gravest crime against humanity ever committed. This is now, in the new exhibition, always assumed and here and there also worded, but far less illustrated than used to be the case. Artefacts on display are predominantly personal belongings of survivors or victims, so mostly small scale. One large exhibit is a part of a deportation train carriage (from the Belgian railways) as used in the Holocaust – a surviving item from the previous incarnation of this exhibition.

As photography was strictly forbidden within the Holocaust Galleries, I don’t have (as I normally do) the records in visual photo form to draw on in writing a more detailed report, so I have to leave it at this.

As you exit this part of the museum you come to another one of its star exhibits: Standing in a prominent place as a visual link between the WWII/Holocaust and Cold War sections is a bomb casing of the type used for the Little Boy atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in the final climax of WWII. Apparently this is one of five original such casings made and the object is on loan from the USA. So it isn't just a replica but, at least in part, a sibling of the real thing!

The Cold War topic itself is part of the overarching theme “Peace and Security 1945 – 2014” (complementing the “Witnesses to War” collections in the atrium terraces on the other levels). The first part about the Cold War as such includes various replicas of more modern nuclear warheads/bombs. This is juxtaposed with an artist's impression of a body scorched by a nuclear blast, made from a shop-window mannequin. The charred black human shape can indeed send shivers down your spine.

Also to be seen here is a small special section about divided Berlin including a model of the Berlin Wall at Bernauer Straße.

The section about the era after the Cold War, i.e. from 1990 onwards, is one of the most intriguing and challenging parts of the IWM, as it is about those modern-day conflicts right up to 8almost) the present day. This section mainly covers the issue of terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following 9/11.

The latter is represented by a piece of mangled steel that turns out to have been a window frame from the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

A smaller-scale but much more frequent type of terrorist attack is creepily exemplified by a suicide bomber's vest seized in Afghanistan as recently as 2013!

Two especially noteworthy exhibits are of a more political/propagandistic nature but nonetheless just as remarkable: One is a mosaic depiction of Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein in a classic pose with a rifle held at the hip. After Saddam Hussein was deposed it was taken down by British troops at the request of Iraqi locals.

This is counterpointed by a poster showing an image of then Prime Minister Tony Blair in a similar pose but with an upturned teacup on his head, accompanied by the slogan “make tea not war”. This is of course to represent the widespread discontent among the general public about the controversial decisions over the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003.

The contemporary section finishes with the display of a witness box from the Lockerbie trials against the two Libyans accused of planting the bomb that had brought down a Pan Am 747 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing all 259 on board. This exhibit serves to represent the ethical and legal difficulties in dealing with terrorism.

Across on the other side of the atrium two particularly British conflicts of the post-WWII era are represented separately. The “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the Falklands War.

The long and bitter conflict in Northern Ireland is represented by a few remarkable objects, the largest of which is one of the typical imposing armoured vehicles used by the British, as well as a remotely controlled bomb-disposal vehicle. Terrorist weapons as well as a number of artists' takes on the conflict are also on display.

Overall this section, entitled “War on the Doorstep”, places a little more emphasis on the terrorist element, and also on the eventual political breakthrough that led to the end of the armed conflict in 1998. But the darker sides of the British involvement in the region are less clearly spelled out: e.g. Bloody Sunday, while mentioned in passing, is not exactly elaborated on. On the other hand they give the name of the region's second city (after Belfast) as “Derry (formerly Londonderry)”, which I suppose is a concession to the Republican side.

The section on the Falklands War was of special interest to me, since I had been to the Falkland Islands in 2013. Amongst the objects on display here is a replica of an Exocet missile hanging from the ceiling (that's the type of French-made anti-ship missile that the Argentinians used to attack British ships), an Argentinian anti-aircraft gun battery and a primitive operating table from an Argentinian field hospital.

The coverage also includes the more recent flaring up of the propaganda war over the islands, which Argentina continues to lay claim to. The roots of the respective British and Argentinian territorial claims are only superficially hinted at, however, which is probably owing to a reluctance on the part of the curators to pour more oil on to the fire of this dispute. (Although I would have thought the much stronger British arguments could well have been stated more explicitly – see this separate chapter which I compiled on these issues!)

Another remarkable artefact I had found on display in this section in 2015 but no longer in 2025 was the Maggie Thatcher puppet from the satirical show “Spitting Image”. The series had gone on air a couple of years after the war (it was discontinued in 1996) and frequently made reference to the Falklands War and the Iron Lady's cold resolve in the matter. I remember these satirical depictions of her very well, so the encounter with the familiar image of the puppet in the flesh (well: latex) was almost spooky for me. But now it is gone. I can only speculate, but maybe the museum curators found this exhibit no longer relevant because younger visitors will have no memory of “Spitting Image”. Anyway, its space was left empty when I last visited in 2025. Maybe something else will fill it at some point – or maybe the Thatcher pupped will even make a return? I don’t know.

The very largest exhibit in the atrium appears to be linked to the Falklands War as well – the Harrier jump jet. These were the key aircraft used with ultimate success in this war by the Royal Navy. But the one on display here is in fact a later model that was used in Afghanistan. It is indeed from the opposite atrium terrace that you can look at the jet “eye to eye”, as it were, i.e. into its cockpit and at the tip of its nose.

Upstairs at Level 3 there are spaces for regularly changing temporary exhibitions on various related topics (e.g. espionage, drone warfare, etc.) and also what is called the “Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries”. As the name suggests, this contains mainly works of art related to the topic of war (a famous one is the monumental painting “Gassed”, depicting mustard-gas victims in WW1). But as I was already pretty exhausted after spending over three hours in the other exhibitions I gave this part a miss.

Level 4 is a “Roof Terrace Event Space” but there’s also a Level 5, which is home to the “Lord Ashcroft Gallery: Extraordinary Heroes”. The latter is the closest the IWM now comes to the old-fashioned, more glamorizing style of war museums. On display here are Victoria and George Cross medals with stories about those awarded these decorations. It's a celebration of “gallantry” and bravery. I didn't go in.

A worthwhile amount of time (and money!) can also be spent in the three museum shops: apart from more or less cheesy war-related toys (as well as plastic model kits of planes and the like) this shop also features an extraordinarily wide range of books on various periods and aspects of wars and (the history and politics of) conflicts in general, as well as a large section of DVDs with war movies and documentaries, including comprehensive box sets.

Overall there can hardly be any doubt that this is a definite must-see museum in London! The substantial changes made in the reworked WWII and Holocaust sections detract somewhat from it, in my view, but the IWM London is still one of the most significant war museums in the world. I just found it even better in 2015, before these in part drastic changes were made. But: it’s still not to be missed when in London as a dark tourist.

There is just one more problem: its popularity. This means that at peak times it can be so crowded that it is hard to view everything without enduring repeated long waiting times before you can move on. But on balance this is a small price to pay for seeing such an extraordinary museum. And on my latest visit in January 2025, i.e. pretty much off peak season, there was no real problem with overcrowding

Location: in south central London, on the "other" side of the Thames (i.e. the side opposite Westminster), in the district of Lambeth, post code SE1 6HZ, namely on Lambeth Rd – sitting as a big, detached, domed edifice in a green park with huge battleship gun barrels in front, so it is impossible to miss!

Google Maps locator: [51.4963,-0.1086]

Access and costs: fairly easy to get to; free.

Details: the nearest London Underground station is Lambeth North (Bakerloo line) just one block up the road (Kennington Rd), or you can use the Elephant & Castle station (Northern Line, Bank branch) and walk up St George's Rd (look for the black signposting plaques on the various underpasses' walls – without them the area is a bit tricky to navigate on foot).

Alternatively you could also use Waterloo station and walk down the south side of the station, following the signs to the museum. This route leads past Lambeth North tube station (see above).

In addition there are various bus lines going past the museum. It is also perfectly walkable from Westminster. It's only about a mile (1.3km) from Big Ben – just cross Westminster Bridge and head south-east on Westminster Bridge Rd, through the tunnel under the train lines, then down Kennington Rd and finally turn left into Lambeth Rd.

Admission free (which I find remarkable, as it is so very unlike London or Great Britain in general!)

Opening times: daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (closed only for Christmas)

Visitation is primarily self-guided, but there are also various tours with live guidesoffered by the museum, as well as a range of educational programmes (mainly aimed at school groups).

Almost all parts of the museum are wheelchair-accessible – and the museum is endeavouring to make the IWM more accessible in general, for example by providing some texts in Braille together with tactile exhibits and maps, as well as screens with interpretation through sign language, but those elements cover only certain aspects/parts of the museum, so are not comprehensive (yet). Apparently there’s also an audio guide being worked on.

Photography is generally allowed for private purposes, except in the Holocaust Galleries and the two art galleries, where all photography is forbidden (and it’s strictly enforced).

Note also that before you can enter the exhibition spaces, bags have to be stored in the lockers provided (you need a 1 GBP coin to operate them, but that is returned when you collect your belongings).

Time required: Real war history buffs could probably spend days in here – but even more selective dark tourists shouldn't underestimate the breadth of coverage

So for a reasonably selective but still thorough visit it's advisable to allocate the best part of (at least half) a day. Or why not come back on separate (return-)visits – since it's free …

The official website of the museum recommends “at least two hours”. With just two hours you’d have to be very selective indeed (in fact the museum website recommends that too). If you are already well familiar with the subject matters of the various sections, then it’s perhaps doable, but if you really want to go into more depth, two hours is nowhere near enough.

Combinations with other dark destinations: Lambeth is on the south-eastern bank of the Thames opposite Westminster, a reasonably easy walk (or short bus ride) away to the west. Not that Westminster is as such a dark tourism destination (well, depends on your political views, I'd guess), but in the midst of the Whitehall government district the Churchill War Rooms are a most suitable combination. It's actually a branch of the IWM, hidden away at Clive Steps, King Charles Street, which runs parallel to Downing Street just one block south.

War museum buffs could also consider seeing the third branch of the IWM within London, namely the HMS Belfast cruiser from WWII, now permanently moored right opposite the Tower of London. The ship can be explored from top to bottom, from the bridge to the boiler rooms deep in the bowels of the hull.