The Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport has celebrated its 40th birthday.

Despite its humble beginnings – it started as a small room in HMS Dolphin – the museum has developed to become one of the Navy’s foremost tourist attractions.

But there is still plenty of scope for development, and the museum’s sights are set on further growth. A bid has been lodged with the Lottery Commission to build a new extension to house all the exhibits that cannot be displayed in the existing packed quarters.

Earlier this month the museum welcomed acclaimed BBC war correspondent Kate Adie, who gave a lecture entitled Women and War to an invited audience.

The current museum exhibition, From domestic to destroyer: Free a man for sea provided an ideal backdrop for the talk, and Kate Adie also signed copies of her latest book Corsets to Camouflage that has been produced in association with the Imperial War Museum.

Proceeds from donations at the lecture will go towards Dame Betty Boothroyd’s charity, the Memorial to the Women of World War II, which aims to set up the first dedicated monument in this country to the 600,000 women who served their country in the Armed Forces during the war.