Warriors and widows
The organisers have set themselves some task with this all-encompassing title. As they do their best to demonstrate, women have been involved with war in countless ways, from Boudicca rebelling against the Romans to protesters against nuclear weapons at Greenham Common.
The most conventional image of wartime women is of the stoics on the home front, and there are ration cards, posters and even one of the original white feathers used by women to intimidate men into service during World War I - as well as plenty of evidence of the results of sending men off to war, including a heartbreaking original diary entry from Vera Brittain (later author of Testament Of Youth) on losing her fiancÈ®
The two World Wars inevitably take up most space, but they are arguably less interesting than documentation of women in drag joining in various older wars, or pictures of American women enthusiastically loading cannons in the Civil War.
The rest of the world - Amazonian African regiments, Russian Battalions of Death - get a quick look-in, but this is mainly British, and far too heavy on the costumes: there are only so many nurse or auxiliary uniforms you can productively look at.
The exceptions to this are valuable for something the exhibition as a whole is a little weak on: the broader view.
Lindsay Forde's two wedding dresses bear poignant testimony to a generation bludgeoned twice: married once in rationed wartime cloth and once in post-war finery, she was widowed twice - once in each World War.
Until April 18, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road SE1, daily 10am to 6pm, £7, £5 concs. Tel: 020 7416 5320. www.iwm.org.uk Tube: Lambeth North
