WW2, please? Visitors drag my brain into the 20th century

From the day I moved to the UK, my cousin warned me that whenever he finally got over to visit, all the sightseeing would be about World War II. It's our grandfather's fault.

Our patriarch was scholarly but also loved swashbuckling drama, and we both remember delightful weekend afternoons as small children watching TV movies with him. (Inevitably to my grandmother reprimanding him. "Johnnie, they're too young for that!") Curiously, however, Gaga ... as we called him ... seems to have fed us different diets. Had he figured out our personalities even then? Did we indicate preferences? Or were we shaped by vagaries of late '60s and early '70s TV programming? All I know is that my cousin, Ron, consumed World War films while I drank in pirate flicks and medieval epics. Those weekend afternoons with Gaga are sacred in our memories and shaped our adult passions. I think I got the better end of the deal, naturally, since my movies led to castles, Caribbean beaches, sailboats, rum drinks and walled European cities. They certainly wired me to lose interest in any story set much after the Napoleonic wars.

But Ron was finally visiting. So I had to change my usual itinerary for visitors. We were going to the 20th century.

His No. 1 request? The Churchill War Rooms. These are a fabulously atmospheric look at how the government ran in London during the Blitz, seen today almost exactly as things were during the war. The prime minister and his cabinet retreated down here to run the war in ... as best they could ensure it ... relative safety. Having seen Hitler's bond-villain style network of massive tunnels carved into the mountain in Berchtesgaden before I got to the London site, I was surprised by the small scale and domestic humility of Churchill's space. It's not even that far under ground. At one point the curators strip back the ceiling panels to show you the iron bars and reinforced concrete, but it didn't seem like much compared to half a mountain. Then again, both spaces reinforce the tale we know. One side grandiose, dark and deluded, the other scrappy, practical and of the people.

The fact that these rooms are dressed pretty much as they were during the war, occupied by mannequins representing historic figures and described on an audio guide that features many authentic quotes adds to the charm. The map room in particular makes you feel like you've been dropped into the middle of a WWII film. The authenticity also fuels a sense of claustrophobia. These are small spaces. It's easy to imagine the fear and frustration as bombs pounded overhead and walls shook.

Though the core suite of rooms has been open to the public since the mid-'80s, additional renovations and restorations since the turn of the century have created what you see today. In addition to the main command and control rooms, you can see bedrooms for Churchill, his wife and staff, support offices, a warren of hallways and an atmospheric physical plant room that's available for event hire. (How did I miss this when I was still in charge of a large corporate budget and events in the IT sector?) There is also an impressive Churchill museum that tells the whole story of his life with artefacts, video and interactive displays. One word of warning: it's easy to lose yourself in here and run out of steam, not realising that the heart of the Cabinet rooms are still ahead of you.

A second word of warning: This is one of the few London attractions for which buying tickets in advance is absolutely essential. Those small spaces limit numbers. Advance ticket holders wait. People who just turn up wait longer, and may not get in. Only members of the Imperial War Museum skip the queue. (An adult ticket to the War Rooms is £22, annual IWM membership is £35. So if you're planning to add either Duxford or the HMS Belfast to your sightseeing within the year, buy membership instead.)

Though it has five branches, the main Imperial War Museum is across the river from the War Rooms and was also on my cousin's must see list. Though keeping it in the 20th century, I insisted that we start here with WWI. This museum shut down for a major renovation early in the decade, re-opening just before the centenary of the sadly mis-named "war to end all wars". The WWI exhibition created for that anniversary got rave reviews. So great, in fact, that we couldn't get in the first time we made the attempt back in 2014.  Now that it's been around for four years access is much easier, but it still deserves the praise.

This is modern museum presentation at its best, mixing artefacts with video, sound effects and interactive exhibits. You can play games to help you understand difficult concepts like how to provision an army, measure yourself against the height and weight of typical recruits, try on uniforms or walk through a loud, ominous trench. All of the displays are built around storytelling, whether it's peering into a case containing the personal effects of Edith Cavell, a British nurse who saved lives on both sides but was executed as a spy by the Germans, or sitting around a virtual campfire letting ghostly voices tell you about their experiences.

Given that the Imperial War Museum was a direct result of World War I ... established to teach lessons so that people would not repeat history ... it's no surprise that this is one of the most comprehensive WWI museums in the world. If you tried to take everything in, from causes and early enthusiasm through stalemate, horror, peace and the reparations that set us up for WWII, you'd have to spend a whole day here. Luckily, this is one of London's free museums so you can pop in to graze on what interests you most. Upper floors cover the second World War (with a great side-exhibit on intelligence and spies), the Cold War and modern conflicts, but none do as comprehensive a job at immersive, chronological storytelling as the museum's starting point.

To round out the story of early 20th century warfare we headed out of London, to a far lesser known but equally interesting site. The Army Flying Museum on the edge of Salisbury Plain isn't as good as the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (one of the best aviation museums I've ever been to, written about here), but if you can't get to that part of the country this is an excellent substitute. And the army has one important thing Duxford doesn't: gliders.

They were a stealth tactic to get men behind enemy lines in WWII. Build an airplane-sized glider out of balsa wood and paper, fill it with troops, tow it up into the air, then release it and ...  in theory ... let the pilots glide it smoothly and silently to a safe landing, after which the passengers could slip away into the night to perform their missions. Of course, with no engines these things were difficult to control, and their flimsy construction offered little protection from weather, rough landings or bullets once the enemy spotted you. It took a special, almost un-imaginable, kind of bravery to climb into a glider. Or maybe they were all just crazy.

Given their lightweight, throw-away nature, this is pretty much the only place in the world you can see original gliders from WWII; there are pieces of three of them ... one almost the whole thing ... with displays that tell the story of glider use throughout the war, from spectacular success to horrific sacrifice.

While unique and exciting, this is just the tip of the iceberg here. There are two hangars of aircraft with two floors of museum displays along each. Unlike the Imperial War Museum this is fairly old-school: artefacts and information boards. But it's interesting stuff, starting from the early days of aviation and going up through the modern day. The Royal Air Force split out from the Army at the end of WWI, so you get a comprehensive view of the start of military flight here (including balloons). Though the Air Force got the sexy fighter planes after that, there's plenty of interesting kit here including prototype drones, transport planes and fighting helicopters. Small simulators are dotted around and reasonably priced at £1 a go. Allowing me to confirm my hunch that flying an Apache helicopter is actually quite difficult.

There's a cafe here with a large terrace overlooking a grassy airfield still in use by the base next door, and they do flying exhibitions here on certain days. Tickets are £14 (not related to the IWM network) but good for re-entry over the course of a year, so a great deal for locals. We'll be back.

That trio was all we could fit in during my cousin's relatively short visit. I'm already thinking about what I could show him next. In addition to Duxford (naturally), there's the military command centre and warren of defensive tunnels under Dover castle, the HMS Belfast now docked on the Thames, all the fabulous intelligence stuff at Bletchley Park and more secret squirrel stuff in Disraeli's home at Hughenden, And that's before we consider crossing the channel to check out Normandy. (Read about my visit to the last one here.)

See, I can do the 20th century. It's not nearly as much fun as pirates and knights in shining armour. But I think Gaga would be proud.

Duxford soars, Ballroom swirls between the poles of preference

There's heated debate these days over whether traditional "masculine" and "feminine" preferences are nature or nurture. Without cultural influences, would little boys dress up in spangles and feathers while little girls went for the toy armaments and beat each other up? In a week that saw a friend and me sharing two experiences at the opposite poles of the sexual stereotype spectrum, I'm leaning towards nature.

On Tuesday, we loved the stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann's gloriously camp Strictly Ballroom. If you had emptied the theatre of women and gay men, I doubt there would have been enough bodies to populate three rows. Too bad for them. It was the most joyous, morale-boosting, feel-good girls' night out I can remember. Four days later, with our men in tow, we had to consider what to do with a Saturday afternoon in East Anglia. I was pushing for Tudor architecture (Blickling Hall was just north of us), but only the Imperial War Museum at Duxford would tempt my husband from an afternoon with his laptop. And while I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the planes and tanks, there is simply no doubt that the Y chromosome holders bonded with the military technology in a primal way we girls couldn't approach.

STRICTLY BALLROOM
In a world where the stage show Mamma Mia! rolls towards its 20th anniversary with no loss of momentum, the only surprise about Strictly Ballroom is how long it took to get to London. The original 1992 romantic comedy is widely beloved and already has all the classic elements of a golden age musical, from the boy meets-gets-loses-regains girl arc, to the ingenue-to-star story, to the impressive dance numbers. Lurhman adapted his own work for a Sydney stage debut in 2011. It had run in Australia, Canada and the North of England before opening at London's Piccadilly Theatre, all to average reviews. But, frankly, this is the kind of thing where reviews don't really matter. The singing and dancing is up to West End standards. The sets and costumes look great. After that, it's a matter of personal taste. If you (a) already love the film, (b) have a deep affection for lightweight, innocent old musicals like Singing in the Rain, and (c) have a soft spot for '80s pop, you will have a magnificent evening. (Two out of three will do. None of my companions had seen the film; they all loved the show.)

Though it's remarkably similar, you're not just seeing the film on stage. There's a new soundtrack, adding to the show's existing classics (Time After Time; Love is in the Air; Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps) with favourites like George Michael's Freedom, Whitney Houston's I Want to Dance with Somebody and Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself. There's some interesting mashing and re-interpretation, but enough of the originals to have you tapping your feet throughout the evening. There's also a new character: a narrator who sometimes enters the plot as a dance contest emcee, but who is mostly just on stage to tell you the story. He's also doing almost all the singing, a big departure from the usual musical and giving the evening, at some points, the feeling of a concert with whoever is playing that role. I assume this was developed as a star vehicle for someone. In London, Will Young had debuted the role but it had recently switched to X-Factor winner Matt Cardle. (Who, paying some attention to the reviews, I suspect was more engaging and better suited to the music than Young.) The most notable thing about the rest of the cast is how exact their likeness is to the film characters. It is as much tribute act as independent work. And it's enormous fun, in the goofiest, girliest way imaginable.

DUXFORD

There is nothing goofy or girly about anything at Duxford, but there is plenty of emotion. Awe, pride, admiration and fascination come in waves. At first glance, it's a typical air and space museum. Big, multi-story buildings with lots of aircraft scattered across the floor and dangling from the ceiling at different levels. But there are depths of human interest here that I haven't picked up on visits to similar collections in Washington's Smithsonian or Munich's Deutsches Museum. Almost every exhibit has a personal story with it; the inside scoop from someone who flew, supported or designed the craft in front of you. You can get hands on by going inside several planes, including a legendary Concorde. (Yes, just as cramped as legend says.) Several military groups have regimental museums here, bringing more real people into the picture. And dogs. The para-dog in the Parachute Regiment's section was a highlight of my day. Need your tears jerked? Head over to the American hangar where a pile of twisted metal girders from the World Trade Centre reminds you of the protective duty the military aircraft here exist to fulfil.

American hangar? Oh, yes. During WW2 this airfield became station 357 of the US 8th Air Force, and 113 U.S. pilots lost their lives flying from here. The American museum covers their experience and shows a range of aircraft since that war, including a magnificently stealthy Blackbird and that F15 Eagle. The production line was one of the prides of St. Louis when I was a kid, and F15s performed at every 4th of July air show. My first job was at McDonnell Douglas, and the pride we had walking by those magnificent machines in various stage of production was palpable. Finding one here was like coming across an old friend.

There's a lot of beauty here, too. The exquisite craftsmanship of the wooden components in the WW1 fighters. Sleek, shining art deco lines of 1930s passenger craft. Cold War jets that look like they've come out of the era's cartoons or sci fi films. A Merlin engine, displayed on a plinth like a sculpture, is lovely enough to be art as well as breakthrough technology.

Duxford is huge. Don't attempt it without at least half a day to explore. There are five sizeable hangars of aircraft, covering everything from periods of history (Battle of Britain) to types of plane (land and sea, fold-up wings) to the restoration workshop. Even the buildings themselves are worthy of note: two hangars are charming WWI-era buildings, while the American hangar makes a striking modern statement. If the aircraft aren't enough for you, there's an additional building full of tanks and armoured vehicles with an atmospheric D-Day experience. All of the buildings are strung out along an airstrip which gives this museum its most unique aspect: some of the displays actually fly. You get to see and hear these beauties in action, including an iconic Spitfire. If you're well funded, you can even buy a ride in some of the aircraft.

All of these extra elements meant that Duxford massively exceeded my expectations. I thought I was sacrificing an afternoon to manly pursuits in order to make my husband happy. I ended up almost as engaged in the experience as him. Which just shows that, while we may default to "masculine" or "feminine" preferences, enjoyment of any activity can cross genders. At least, that's the theory. When it comes to garish, camp musicals however, I doubt my husband will buy my argument.