Imperial War Museum Opened By King George

Imperial War Museum Opened by King George

An 18-inch naval gun (the largest ever used by Britain, and the second-largest ever used after those of Japan’s Yamato-class battleships in the next war), being installed at the Imperial War Museum in the Crystal Palace ahead of the June 1920 opening.

June 9 1920, London–Already in 1917, the Imperial War Cabinet began considering how to commemorate and preserve the history of the war.  An MP, Alfred Mond, proposed the idea of a National War Museum, and this was swiftly agreed to.  Proposals to expand the scope into a museum and memorial were rejected by the War Cabinet, who wanted to keep the two concepts separate (the Cenotaph would be unveiled on Armistice Day 1920).  To reflect the contributions of India and the other Dominions, the name was changed to the Imperial War Museum by the end of 1917.  The museum held a few temporary exhibitions in the following years, but did have a permanent location until June 9, 1920, when its site in the Crystal Palace was opened by King George V.

The museum would relocate in 1924 (well before the Crystal Palace burned in 1936), and again in 1936.  In the years since, its collections have grown to encompass material from the Second World War and subsequent British conflicts, and it has opened additional locations.

The author would like to thank the Imperial War Museum for their extensive photographic archive of the First World War, from which many of the pictures for Today in World War I were drawn.