You can view the visible part of this, the unlovely ministry itself, from the Thames Embankment Walk, just to the east of the Houses of Parliament. Pindar was built in the 1980s and, given the barely suppressed hysteria of the time, it’s fair to assume that it can withstand a direct nuclear attack. I would also guess that this is where the royal family would have been moved in the case of impending attack—they could have got there in minutes, either directly or by first diving into the Admiralty Citadel.
It’s no secret that priority seating for nuclear bunkers in Britain has always been allocated to the military, politicians and senior government officers. In that company the head of state would be deemed a first among equals, in the interests of national morale and continuity, were there to be any continuity worth enjoying after the radioactive dust settled over London.
It was rather different in World War II. The Queen’s rightly revered father, George VI (the name now transferred by Will and Kate to their young prince) made a point of going to London’s East End when it was being eviscerated by the Blitz. This previously painfully shy man, tortured by his stuttering, became outgoing and sympathetic to the most hard hit of his subjects. They loved him for it.
Nor did Churchill exactly cower in the subterranean Cabinet War Rooms. When the Houses of Parliament took a direct hit he posed the next morning amid the rubble, jaw firmly set against the enemy, a carefully staged photo op that stirred the spirit of the land. And his aides had frequently to try to stop Churchill from appearing personally to direct the Royal Air Force’s combat in the Battle of Britain—I use the word “try” because he mostly ignored them and, as much as the King, became the symbol of London unbowed.
There are some other remnants of that time that you can spot where Londoners found safe refuge—the Deep Level Shelters that were built alongside the existing tube stations on the two lines in the system that were already the deepest, the Central and the Northern.
Mostly these appear at street level as unattractive circular blockhouses near the tube station entrances, but one, near the Goodge Street station entrance in central London, is larger and more impressive. It’s been painted in cream with red striping, making it look a bit like a 1950s ice cream parlor—but for the name over the door, the Eisenhower Centre. It was in this shelter where General Eisenhower and his staff planned the D-Day landings. Do not, however, be misled by that name into thinking you can visit and see memorabilia. The original shelter is now used to store film and video tape.
Finally, if the Queen had been not in London when nuclear attack threatened, but in the country, there is another place she could have gone to deliver her broadcast. Among those who seem to have been selected to be preserved as part of the British elite are key staff of the BBC.
Sounding like something that might be an annex of Downtown Abbey, Wood Norton Hall sitting on 200 acres of woodland in Worcestershire, one of the loveliest of English western counties, is, in fact, the cover name for a ten-story-deep bunker built into a hillside for the BBC’s brass and key presenters so that they can, even in the depths of a nuclear winter, continue to broadcast to those few above who may still be breathing. Among its facilities are, it is said, Ping-Pong tables.
