• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1385 0

campaign is charted on wall-to-wall maps with a rash of pinholes showing the movements of convoys. In the hub of the room, a bank of different-color phones known as the “Beauty Chorus” linked the War Rooms to control rooms around the nation. The Prime Minister’s Room holds the desk from which Churchill made his morale-boosting broadcasts; the Telephone Room (a converted broom cupboard) has his hotline to FDR. You can also see the restored suite of rooms that the PM used for dining, cooking, and sleeping. Telephonists and clerks who worked 16-hour shifts slept in lesser quarters in unenviable conditions; it would not have been unusual for a secretary in pajamas to scurry past a field marshal en route to a meeting.

An absorbing addition to the Cabinet War Rooms is the Churchill Museum, a tribute to the stirring politician and defiant wartime icon. Different zones explore his life and achievements—and failures, too—through objects and documents, many of which, such as his personal papers, had never previously been made public. Central to the exhibition is an interactive timeline, with layers of facts, figures, and tales. | Clive Steps, King Charles St., Westminster | SW1A 2AQ | 020/7930–6961 | www.iwm.org.uk | £14.95, includes audio tour | Daily 9:30–6; last admission 5; disabled access | Westminster.

Clarence House.

The London home of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for nearly 50 years, Clarence House is now the Prince of Wales’ and the Duchess of Cornwall’s residence. The Regency mansion was built by John Nash for the Duke of Clarence, who found living in St. James’s Palace quite unsuitable. Since then it has remained a royal home for princesses, dukes, and duchesses, including the present monarch, Queen Elizabeth, as a newlywed before her coronation. The rooms have been sensitively preserved to reflect the Queen Mother’s taste, with the addition of many works of art from the Royal Collection, including works by Winterhalter, Augustus John, and Sickert. You’ll find it less palace and more home (for the Prince and his sons William and Harry), with informal family pictures and comfortable sofas. The tour (by timed ticket entry only) is of the ground-floor rooms and includes the Lancaster Room, so called because of the marble chimneypiece presented by Lancaster County to the newly married Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Like Buckingham Palace, Clarence House is open only in August and September and tickets must be booked in advance. Visitors should note that there are no public restroom facilities at Clarence House. | Clarence House, St. James’s Palace, St. James’s | SW1 1BA | 020/7766–7303 | www.royalcollection.org.uk | £8.50 | Aug. and Sept. | Green Park.

Houses of Parliament.

If you want to understand some of the centuries-old traditions and arcane idiosyncrasies that make up constitutionless British parliamentary democracy, the Palace of Westminster, as the complex is still properly called, is the place to come. The architecture in this 1,100-room labyrinth impresses, but the real excitement lies in stalking the corridors of power. A palace was first established on this site by Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. William II started building a new palace in 1087, and this gradually became the seat of English administrative power. However, the current building dates from the 19th century, when fire destroyed the rest of the complex in 1834.

Houses of Parliament Highlights

Visitors aren’t allowed to snoop too much, but the Visitors’ Galleries of the House of Commons do afford a view of democracy in process when the banks of green-leather benches are filled by opposing MPs (members of Parliament). When they speak, it’s not directly to each other but through the Speaker, who also decides who will get time on the floor. Elaborate procedures notwithstanding, debate is often drowned out by raucous jeers. When MPs vote, they exit by the “Aye” or the “No” corridor, thus being counted by the party “tellers.”

Westminster Hall, with its remarkable hammer-beam roof, was the work of William the Conqueror’s