Down those steps is the entrance to a bunker. During the Second World War, while German bombs were flattening the city above, Winston Churchill ran the entire war from a cramped basement under these government buildings. The map room down there was staffed twenty-four hours a day, without a single break, for nearly six years. And somewhere in that bunker was the most secret toilet in the history of Britain.
There was a small room down there with a door that locked, and a little sign on the lock that flipped between engaged and vacant — exactly like a bathroom. The staff were told it was Churchill's private toilet. The one room the Prime Minister needed for himself. And they believed it, because of course they did. Except it wasn't a toilet. It was a phone booth. Inside was a top-secret scrambler line — the only secure telephone connection between London and the White House. When Churchill needed to talk to President Roosevelt, in total secrecy, he went into the "toilet." For years, th
e people working ten feet away thought the boss just had a very private bathroom habit. One senior officer, absolutely bursting one afternoon, saw the vacant sign, tried the handle, and was quietly, permanently reassigned to Scotland the following week.
The man himself. Churchill ran the war on a schedule that would get you fired anywhere else. He worked from bed until eleven, dictating to a secr
