{"id":8291,"date":"2025-06-23T15:15:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T15:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/8291\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T15:15:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T15:15:09","slug":"londons-secret-tunnels-that-helped-inspire-james-bond-will-open-to-the-public-complete-with-a-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/8291\/","title":{"rendered":"London’s secret tunnels that helped inspire James Bond will open to the public, complete with a bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 There is a history-rich part of London that few people have seen, where the city braced for the Blitz<\/a>, James Bond\u2019s creator<\/a> got inspiration and secret Cold War messages passed between Washington and Moscow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a network of tunnels 100 feet (30 meters) below the streets that was secret for decades \u2014 but could be the city\u2019s next big tourist destination. Local authorities have approved plans to fill the 90,000 square-foot (8,400 square-meter) site with an intelligence museum, an interactive World War II memorial and one of the world\u2019s deepest underground bars.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing space, an amazing city,\u201d said Angus Murray, chief executive of The London Tunnels, as subway trains rattled overhead. \u201cAnd I think it tells a wonderful story.\u201d<\/p>\n

A vast bomb shelter<\/p>\n

The tunnels lie directly below London Underground\u2019s Central Line in the city\u2019s Holborn area. Work to dig them began in secret in 1940, when Britain feared invasion by Nazi Germany. They were designed to shelter up to 8,000 people in a pair of parallel tunnels 16\u00bd feet (5 meters) wide and 1,300 feet (400 meters) long.<\/p>\n

The tunnels were never used for that purpose; by the time they were finished in 1942 the worst of the Blitz was over, and Underground bosses had opened up subway stations as air raid shelters for Londoners.<\/p>\n

Instead, the tunnels became a government communications center and a base for the Special Operations Executive, a clandestine unit that sent agents \u2014 many of them women \u2014 on perilous sabotage missions in Nazi-occupied territory under orders from Prime Minister Winston Churchill to \u201cset Europe ablaze.\u201d<\/p>\n

A naval officer named Ian Fleming was a liaison officer to the SOE, and the subterranean HQ may have provided inspiration for the world of secret agent 007 that he went on to create.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis truly is the Q Branch of James Bond,\u201d said Murray, referring to the thrillers\u2019 fictional MI6 quartermaster and gadget-maker.<\/p>\n

After the war, more tunnels were added to the complex and the site became a secure telephone exchange. From the mid-1950s it was a terminus of the first trans-Atlantic undersea telephone cable. After the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, a \u201cred telephone\u201d hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin was established and ran through here.<\/p>\n

Up to 200 people worked underground, bound to secrecy but with the compensation of an onsite canteen and bar. For a time, the site also housed a bunker to be used by the government in the event of nuclear war.<\/p>\n

By the 1980s, technology had moved on and British Telecom moved out. The tunnels lay largely forgotten until BT sold them in 2023 to Murray\u2019s private equity-backed group.<\/p>\n

Plans include a memorial to the more than 40,000 civilians killed by German bombing in the war, cultural exhibitions and a nightspot that Murray boasts will be \u201cthe deepest bar in the world in a city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secret wartime history<\/p>\n

It also will house Britain\u2019s Military Intelligence Museum, which is currently tucked away on a military base north of London with limited public access. Museum bosses have agreed to move a collection covering more than 300 years of history to the tunnels, bringing a much higher profile for a story they believe needs to be told.<\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s not targeted at people who already have an interest in military topics,\u201d said the chair of the museum\u2019s board of trustees, who gave only his first name, Alistair, because of the museum\u2019s connection to Britain\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cA heavy theme that will run through the new museum is that there are skills and tools that military intelligence has developed over years and centuries \u2026 and the fundamental one is, how do you tell truth from lies?\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a very big theme of now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum also will flesh out the secret story of the Special Operations Executive. The museum\u2019s collection contains agent messages, supplies, weapons and sabotage equipment from the SOE\u2019s wartime adventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the people that worked in SOE never talked about it, either at the time or afterwards, and many of the records have disappeared,\u201d Alistair said. \u201cSo a lot is known about SOE, but we don\u2019t know everything, and the chances are we will never know everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

A unique attraction<\/p>\n

For now, the tunnel entrance is through an unmarked door in an alley, and walking the cool, dim corridors brings the thrill of discovering a hidden corner of history. Within the thick steel and concrete walls are chunky old generators and telecoms equipment, a staff canteen with its kitchen still intact, and the bar, its 1960s orange and brown d\u00e9cor giving off retro \u201cAustin Powers\u201d vibes<\/p>\n

Here and there are graffiti tags and a few items left by urban explorers who snuck in over the years, including a set of bowling pins with ball, and \u2014 incongruously \u2014 a bear costume.<\/p>\n

London Tunnels aims to open in 2028, and to attract up to 4.2 million tourists a year. That may sound ambitious, but Murray says the site\u2019s mix of \u201chistory and heritage and novelty\u201d makes it a unique draw.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go home and say, \u2018I went to this really cool tunnel today,\u2019 then we\u2019re halfway there,\u201d he said. \u201cIf what\u2019s inside of it is even better, you\u2019re going to go \u2018Oh that\u2019s fantastic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 There is a history-rich part of London that few people have seen, where the city…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9533,84,171,57,9534,2676,8132,53,4338,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-8291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-angus-murray","9":"tag-district-of-columbia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-ian-fleming","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-military-and-defense","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-united-kingdom-government","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114733339531967401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}