The Second World War paraphernalia in the Imperial War Museum is not just tanks, guns and half-tracks. There is a sailing dinghy - one of the boats which evacuated soldiers from the Dunkirk beaches - as well as posters about careless talk costing lives and, high above you, propeller-driven aeroplanes, as archaic now as tournament armour, their fuselages and wings not quite smooth, as though an apprentice panel-beater had been at work. The effect is less bellicose than melancholy. Eric Ravilious's work as a war artist has the same quality.

LRB 4 December 2003 | PDF Download