Visitors to taste Dunkirk experience

The exhibition will be in the tunnels of Dover Castle in Kent from where Operation Dynamo, involving the dramatic evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from the Dunkirk beaches in France, was planned.

Using original wartime film footage and real-life accounts, English Heritage has dramatised those dark days of more than 70 years ago.

The tunnels were the headquarters of Vice Admiral Bertram Home Ramsay, who directed the Dunkirk evacuation which resulted in thousands of members of the British Expeditionary Force being safely returned to England after the fall of France to the Nazis.

Thanks to audio-visual effects, visitors to the new exhibition will be able to "journey" from the cramped offices within the tunnel complex right on to the beaches of Dunkirk where the troops had to withstand 10 days of artillery and air bombardment.

A new exhibition, entitled Wartime Tunnels Uncovered, will also open in June and will tell the history of the labyrinth of tunnels and how they played their part in England's safety through the centuries.