Thoughtful Thursday: Imperial War Museum

Outfit: Zara dress (S/S 2014), Topshop sandals, Zara bag and sunglasses from T K Maxx by the brand 'Marilyn Monroe'

Today's Thoughtful Thursday post is a little bit different, as I felt urged to write it after my weekend antics. Anyone who knows me will know that I'm a self-confessed nerd. I don't try to hide it; my parents have photos of me at the age of 4 or 5 sitting butt-naked on our patio in Lanzarote with a Maths Letts book rather than playing with a light saber like my brother. My favourite make-believe game was playing a teacher so I could 'mark' the student's (also me) spellings and maths sums. At the age of 11 or 12 my favourite part of the weekend was going to the library and stocking up on 5 books, and then staying awake, using my phone as a light, reading into the night. That's right, I'm a nerd.

So having confessed my childhood secrets, it will come as no surprise that going to museums is one of my favourite things to do in London. They're all free, they're all open every day of the week, and they all provide incredible amounts of knowledge, stories and secrets which, quite honestly, excite me quite a lot.

My favourite museum of all time has to be the Imperial War Museum. When I was 15 my school took us on a school trip to the Holocaust exhibition as we were studying WW2 in school, and the experience will stay with me forever.

The exhibition is absolutely jam-packed full of stories of Jews, gypsies, Nazi officers, members of the Resistance, German citizens and people in the Allied countries. It holds facts and statistics that make you gasp and an overwhelming amount of knowledge so that you come away almost feeling like your brain is heavier. Every time I go I seem to learn something new, and Sunday was no exception. I have quite an unhealthy obsession with WW2 and I love learning about it; it is inconceivable to me that only c. 75 years ago one man and his band of followers managed to convince a nation and hide from the world the 11 million deaths of the Holocaust.

I think it's so important that we try to comprehend it (however difficult) in order to hopefully ensure that nothing like it could ever happen again. It's terrifying that it happened, but what is even more terrifying is that the same kind of destruction may be going on elsewhere in the world as I speak but that too is being hidden. As Spiderman once said, 'with great knowledge comes great responsibility.' Hopefully educating the world about these abominable occurrences means we become wiser and take responsibility to ensure that history is never repeated. Saying that, watching the news last night and the horrific images from Israel, I'm not so sure that's true.

I don't want to ruin the exhibition with facts and stories that I read, but I really urge you to go next time you are in London/near Elephant and Castle. You can't come away from it not learning or feeling something. From the videos of the survivors of the concentration camps, to the model mock-up of Auschwitz, to the SS uniforms and letters between loved ones, there is so much to take in. And even if you don't fancy learning about the Holocaust, the museum has recently re-opened with new WW1 exhibitions which are equally as fascinating.

For more info on the museum go to: http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-london