The Imperial War Museum seems to be impossible to find. Anyone who plainly cannot speak English and is walking along Westminster Bridge Road with a map will ask you where it is. "Directional Questions not answered" says a helpful hand-lettered sign next to the Evening Standard kiosk in front of Lambeth North station. The Imperial War Museum is to blame.
I have never succeeded in entering it. It costs a reasonable sum of money to get in, and it never struck me as being worthwhile to pay it for a quick lunchtime scan. It is set in surprisingly large, surprisingly open park, with an annoyingly inconvenient fence all the way around it. No one ever sweeps up the leaves. You realize in late summer that the leaves on the ground are last year's or the year before's.
It was founded by an Act of Parliament in 1920 and opened at the Crystal Palace, moved about as London institutions do, and ended up in a hospital building. It was closed during World War Two, since they had a real war to muse upon.
Its park is called the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park in memory of the mother of Viscount Rothermere. Now who could forget her? The pub opposite used to call itself after Charlie Chaplin, who at least drank in the vicinity.