Churchill's Wartime Bunker to Open to Public (2001)

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Cabinet War dining room is shown in this undated handout photo in a bunker under London. Secret areas of Winston Churchill's underground bunker, the nerve center for British military planning and intelligence in World War II, are to be opened to the public for the first time. Access will be allowed to Churchill's private quarters, showing a personal side of the wartime prime minister, director of London's Cabinet War Rooms museum Phil Reed said.

Churchill, who died at the age of 90 in 1965, led Britain between 1940 and 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. He remained a member of Parliament until 1964 when he chose not to seek re-election.

The rooms, hidden for 60 years, are to be renovated in a .7 million project and will open in 2003, joining parts of the labyrinthine Cabinet War Rooms, which have been open since 1984.

It was in these dank and airless rooms, not far from his official residence in Downing Street, central London, where Churchill had coded telephone conversations with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, plotted campaigns with generals and slept during the heaviest nights of bombing.

The newly revealed rooms will include the family dining room and the kitchen where Churchill's cook, undeterred by food rationing, worked to sate the leader's famous appetite.

``These inauspicious yet historically important rooms have been hidden from the public for too long. This is where the country's leading figures ate, slept, sought refuge from the wartime bombs and made momentous decisions,'' Reed told reporters.

Reed also plans to open a Churchill museum in 2005, the 60th anniversary year of the end of the war, housing paintings, papers and school reports of Churchill.

Churchill's grandson, also called Winston Churchill, told reporters he remembered playing toy trains with his grandfather in the underground bunker.

He said his grandfather would have approved of a project that taught people about the past.

``It is only by knowing where you're coming from that you can have any hope of knowing where you're going,'' Churchill quoted his grandfather as having said.

　

英国首相丘吉尔在二战时期的秘密地下掩体即将对公众开放。这个地下掩体曾是英国二战期间的军事和情报中枢。 伦敦战时密室博物馆的负责人菲尔·雷德说，公众可以参观丘吉尔二战时期在地下掩体中的私人住所，从而了解这位著名的英国首相在战时的生活情况。

1965年90岁高龄的丘吉尔与世长辞，他曾先后于1940-1945年和1951-1955年间担任英国首相。1964年丘吉尔宣布退出竞选，在那之前他一直是英国议会的议员。

这些掩体已经在地下隐藏了60年，现在英国政府准备耗资1700万美元对其进行修复，然后作为1984年对外开放的伦敦战时密室地下迷宫的一部分，于2003年对公众开放。

这个地下掩体距离伦敦市中心唐宁街的首相官邸不远，然而就是在这些阴湿、密不透风的房间里，丘吉尔曾通过密码电话和当时的美国总统罗斯福进行通话，和诸位将军共商军事大计，当伦敦遭受二战中最猛烈的轰炸的时候，丘吉尔也是在这里度过难关的。

即将对外开放的这些房间中还包括丘吉尔全家战时使用的餐厅和厨房，在这间厨房里，在当时事物配给相当有限的条件下，丘吉尔的厨师绞尽脑汁为这位有名的美食家首相烹调出合乎其口味的美味佳肴。

雷德告诉记者说："这些现在看来有些阴森但是具有重要历史意义的房间已经隐藏了太长时间了。我们国家的首脑曾经在这里生活，在这里躲避了轰炸，在这里做出了重大的决定。"

雷德还计划在2005年--二战结束60周年的时候开放丘吉尔纪念馆，纪念馆中将收藏丘吉尔的绘画作品、文献以及在学校的记录等。

与其祖父同名的小温斯顿·丘吉尔告诉记者说，他至今还记得小时候和祖父丘吉尔首相在地下掩体中一起玩玩具火车的情景。

他说，如果祖父还在世的话，一定会赞同用这种方式教育人们铭记历史。

小丘吉尔还引用了祖父的一句话："只有了解过去，才能知晓未来的路该如何走。"