Britain at War Experience

Lonely Planet review

Under another Tooley St railway arch, the Britain at War Experience aims to educate the younger generation about the effect WWII had on daily life while simultaneously playing on the nostalgia of the war generation who sit in the mock Anderson air-raid shelter listening to the simulated sounds of warning sirens and bombers flying overhead with extraordinary detachment.

In general it's a tribute to ordinary people and comes off fairly well - though the rather musty displays make it feel like you're on a low-budget TV stage-set.

You descend by lift to a reproduction of an Underground station fitted with bunks, tea urns and even a lending library (as some of the stations really were) and then progress through rooms that display wartime newspaper front pages, posters and Ministry of Food ration books. The BBC Radio Studio allows you to hear broadcasts from everyone from Winston Churchill and Edward Murrow to Hitler and Lord Haw Haw; the Rainbow Corner is a mock-up of a club frequented by American GIs 'over here'. Finally, you emerge amid the wreckage of a shop hit by a bomb, with the smoke still eddying around and the injured - or dead - being carried from the rubble.