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Day 9: London. Touched down, met by our friend and host jLo, and hit the Tube to get into the Square Mile by lunch. At the recommendation of my old boss at J&J, Nick Campbell, we scooted past Leicester and Trafalgar Squares to find our way to the War Cabinet Museum, just around the corner from Number 10 Downing Street, where we spent the good part of the afternoon. It’s a great little exhibition in which you walk through the actual bunker in which Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet and top military and civilian officials worked during the Second World War, and a museum devoted to the life of Churchill.

Highlights included:

• Churchill’s daily routine, which usually involved working from bed until 10am, Pol Roger champagne for lunch, a nap at 3pm, dinner followed by a late evening and reading the next morning’s papers before hitting the sack around 2am.
• how Churchill wrote his speeches and the literary antecedents to some of his most famous expressions; and
• his “Siren Suit” - a one piece red velvet jumpsuit favoured by Churchill.

Next whistle stop was the Houses of Parliament, where (surprisingly, given that the terrorist alert had been raised to “critical” only a few days prior), we made it into both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to cast a quick eye over the Parliamentary debates. We incorrectly assumed that we would have to queue up for hours (given that it was the first Parliamentary week for new PM Gordon Brown) but after passing through a couple of efficient security checkpoints we were in.