Exhibition: Spies, Lies and Deception free at the Imperial War Museum
A new exhibition is taking a closer look at the world of spies and deception.
This autumn, Imperial War Museums (IWM) interrogates the role, purpose and human cost of espionage.
Spies, Lies and Deception is a free exhibition exploring the tricks, tools and elaborate plots that make up the secret world of spying and deception.
From the battlefields of the First World War to the recent Salisbury poisonings, this exhibition features over 25 of the most intriguing, inspiring and shocking stories of the last hundred years.
More than 150 objects, including gadgets, official documents, art and digitised film and photography, explore how these real-life stories have changed the course of conflict and the lives of the people who created them.
The exhibition includes the story of Operation Mincemeat, the Second World War plot that successfully fooled German High Command about the location of the next major Allied assault, by planting a dead body with fake military documents off the Spanish coast.
Objects from Operation Mincemeat, including mastermind Ewen Montagu’s private papers relating to the plot, along with his keepsake of a dinghy’s oar from the submarine which deposited the body off the coast of Spain, illustrate this story of trickery.
Exhibits detailing the work of the largely female Postal Censorships department of the First World War will be displayed alongside a newly commissioned interview with Bellingcat founder, Eliot Higgins.
Bellingcat, an international collective of researchers, used open source data to uncover the real identities of those responsible for the Salisbury Novichok poisonings in 2018.
Together, these and other case studies highlight not only how deception has been uncovered throughout the last hundred years, but how methods and technologies have changed.
To see the exhibition head down to the IWM between September 29 and March 31, 2024.
www.iwm.org.uk/events/spies-lies-and-deception
Picture: Russian troops spot a BRIXMIS team photographing them Picture: Imperial War Museum
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