 | | 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. (Agencies) | 英國首相丘吉爾在二戰時期的秘密地下掩體即將對公眾開放。這個地下掩體曾是英國二戰期間的軍事和情報中樞。 倫敦戰時密室博物館的負責人菲爾·雷德說，公眾可以參觀丘吉爾二戰時期在地下掩體中的私人住所，從而了解這位著名的英國首相在戰時的生活情況。 1965年90歲高齡的丘吉爾與世長辭，他曾先后于1940-1945年和1951-1955年間擔任英國首相。1964年丘吉爾宣布退出競選，在那之前他一直是英國議會的議員。 這些掩體已經在地下隱藏了60年，現在英國政府準備耗資1700萬美元對其進行修復，然后作為1984年對外開放的倫敦戰時密室地下迷宮的一部分，于2003年對公眾開放。  這個地下掩體距離倫敦市中心唐寧街的首相官邸不遠，然而就是在這些陰濕、密不透風的房間里，丘吉爾曾通過密碼電話和當時的美國總統羅斯福進行通話，和諸位將軍共商軍事大計，當倫敦遭受二戰中最猛烈的轟炸的時候，丘吉爾也是在這里度過難關的。
即將對外開放的這些房間中還包括丘吉爾全家戰時使用的餐廳和廚房，在這間廚房里，在當時事物配給相當有限的條件下，丘吉爾的廚師絞盡腦汁為這位有名的美食家首相烹調出合乎其口味的美味佳肴。 雷德告訴記者說："這些現在看來有些陰森但是具有重要歷史意義的房間已經隱藏了太長時間了。我們國家的首腦曾經在這里生活，在這里躲避了轟炸，在這里做出了重大的決定。" 雷德還計劃在2005年--二戰結束60周年的時候開放丘吉爾紀念館，紀念館中將收藏丘吉爾的繪畫作品、文獻以及在學校的記錄等。 與其祖父同名的小溫斯頓·丘吉爾告訴記者說，他至今還記得小時候和祖父丘吉爾首相在地下掩體中一起玩玩具火車的情景。 他說，如果祖父還在世的話，一定會贊同用這種方式教育人們銘記歷史。 小丘吉爾還引用了祖父的一句話："只有了解過去，才能知曉未來的路該如何走。" (中國日報網站譯) |
Updated: 2001-12-05 01:00
