FIND OUT about pillboxes disguised from the Germans as pigsties and toilets at an event at Bodmin Keep Army Museum.To complement the museum’s contemporary art display inspired by pillboxes, the former curator of Southampton City Art Gallery, Tim Craven will be talking on Concrete Castles on November 12 at 7pm and will reveal the history of pillboxes and other wartime defences.

It is an opportunity to find out about the history of Home Forces Commander-in-Chief General ‘Tiny’ Ironside’s anti-invasion plan following the retreat from Dunkirk, when 28,000 ‘pillboxes’ were erected in the summer of 1940. Some were disguised as bus shelters, toilets, pigsties and summerhouses, or fitted by Home Guard humourists with signs reading ‘Hotel Continental’.

Free seats for the talk can be reserved via the museum’s website and visitors can take a look around the Concrete Castles exhibition from 6pm before thetalk.The exhibition explores the ruinous remains of Britain’s World War 2 defence structures that were built just over 80 years ago. Works by 30 contemporary artists from across the UK will be on display at the Museum until 4 December.