IWM Blog

  • War-time traffic on the River Thames: River Police at Waterloo Bridge during the Battle of Britain. Oil painting by John Edgar Platt.
    © IWM ART LD 2642
    Blog: Arts and Culture

    Researching the paintings of London during the Blitz owned by the IWM

    Suzanne Bardgett, 25 September 2020
    Wartime London in Paintings tells the story of the artists commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) who lived and worked in London and how they interacted with the Committee to produce a body of work which today gives us a fresh insight into the city’s wartime history.
  • A still from camera gun film shows tracer ammunition from a Spitfire of No. 609 Squadron, hitting a Heinkel He 111 which was part of the formation that attacked Filton on 25 September 1940.
    © IWM CH 1823
    Blog: Home Front

    Remembering Vivian Roberts, 80 years on

    Andrew Hemmings, 21 September 2020
    The lockdown and coronavirus restrictions in the spring of 2020 brought about many changes in lifestyles. As I could no longer travel in Britain and Europe, I resolved to walk five miles each day in and around Rogerstone.
  • Blog: Second World War

    During the Battle of France, which takes place from May 10 to June 25, 1940, the German army wedges the British Expeditionary Force and parts of the French army into the Channel area at the northern coast of France. The Germans’ rapid invasion of France is the result of a “sickle-cut attack”, from the north through Holland, coordinated with thrusts through the weak points of the Maginot Line in Belgium, and advancing through the Ardennes up to northern France.
  • Astley Park Memorial, Chorley
    Blog: First World War

    Mapping the Centenary - An Introduction

    Dr James Wallis, 21 July 2020
    Over a four year period, Britain and countries around the world commemorated the centenary of the First World War. What took placebetween August 2014 and November 2018 evidenced the enduring impacts and aftermath of this twentieth century conflict upon communities, regions and nations.
  • Ms Emiko Okada holding a map of Hiroshima, showing the burned out area in red. Photo taken by her grand-daughter Yuki Tominaga.
    Blog: Second World War

    Hibakusha: Interviews with women survivors in Hiroshima & Nagasaki

    Annabel Sheen, 8 June 2020
    On 6 August 1945, Allied forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The detonation of these weapons killed thousands of people instantly and many more continued to suffer the effects of radiation poisoning. In this post, we share the testimonies of three women who were directly affected by the dropping of the atomic bombs, as interviewed by artist Lee Karen Stow.
  • Blog: Second World War

    Tower Hill in the Blitz

    Linda Parker, 22 April 2020
    From 7th September 1940, London was bombed by the German Air Force for 57 consecutive nights. The resulting devastation altered the landscape and the character of the city beyond all recognition. Over 40,000 people were killed; churches, houses, shops and offices were reduced to rubble.
  • Blog: Second World War

    ​​​​​​​Visual conversations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    Lee Karen Stow, 8 April 2020
    At 8:15am on the morning of August 6 2015, in blistering heat I stood with young and old at ground zero in Hiroshima, Japan. It was a bewildering, searing moment of collective remembrance, melting in the buzz of cicadas and hum of birdsong. I photographed the sky because it was clear, blue and beautiful, as it apparently was that morning in 1945 when the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped from a United States military plane. Three days later, on August 9, ‘Fat Man’ fell on Nagasaki.
  • Blog: Conservation

    ‘Scent Related Campaign’: Ethical decision making behind the conservation of smell

    Isabelle Hetherington, 22 January 2020
    The conservation work discussed in this blog was carried out for the Transforming IWM London Project (TIWML) – the installation of new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries opening in 2021, along with new learning spaces.
  • Mobile Film Unit car leaving MoI headquarters at Senate House London; 1940.
    Copyright: © IWM
    Blog: Film

    Ministerial Mayhem: The Control of Photography Order, 1939

    Oliver Carter Wakefield, 11 March 2019
    Sir Philip Hesketh-Smithers went to the folk-dancing department; Mr Pauling went to woodcuts and weaving; Mr Digby-Smith was given the Arctic circle; Mr Bentley himself, after a dizzy period in which, for a day, he directed a film about postmen, for another day filed press-cuttings from Istanbul, and for the rest of the week supervised the staff catering, found himself at length back beside his busts in charge of the men of letters.
  • Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha delivers a speech to newly called up soldiers prior to the outbreak of war.
    Copyright: © IWM
    Blog: Second World War

    An Army of Opera Lovers: The Resurrection of the Teatro di San Carlo during the Allied occupation of Naples

    Fabio Simonetti, 3 January 2019
    On 4 November 1943, just over a month after the first Allied troops entered war-torn Naples, Lt. Peter Francis of the Royal Artillery made his first acquaintance with the ruins of the Real Teatro di San Carlo, one of the oldest and most prestigious opera houses in the world. The theatre had been closed in 1942 and it was now in a terrible state: bomb damage had blasted the foyer, debris and layers of dust covered the internal surfaces, there was no electricity or water and a German machine gun nest was still installed on its roof.
  • German troops marching through the main square in Lille for the ceremony of Changing the Guard.
    © IWM (Q 55206)
    Blog: France

    The occupation of northern France in the First World War

    In works on French history, the word ‘Occupation’ (often capitalised) is heavily associated with the Occupation of the Second World War, France’s ‘Dark Years’ of 1940–44. However, whilst this was and remains the defining experience of military occupation for the French, there were other instances of this phenomenon in the country’s modern history.
  • Blog: Photography

    Ben Shephard (1948-2017)

    Thomas Probert, 21 June 2018
    In October of last year, staff and students at IWM heard the sad news that the historian and writer Ben Shephard had died. His contributions ranged over a number of subjects but perhaps the most groundbreaking was his study of soldiers and psychiatrists, A War of Nerves (2000).

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