FOR the first time York residents have the chance to tour Shelley House in Acomb. This is indeed a privilege.

The partly-submerged, bomb-proof bunker was never designed for use by the rabble.

In the event of the nuclear warning, we would have been left to make our own arrangements while the great and the good were shuttled to subterranean safety. There they would have monitored fallout levels, pored over maps and, in all likelihood, concluded that there was nothing they could do.

Descending into Shelley House will be a chilling trip down memory lane. It was built in 1961, at the height of the Cold War, when the prospect of imminent nuclear annihilation cast a dark shadow over the planet. A year later and the Acomb bunker could so easily have been operational, if the Cuban missile crisis had escalated.

It all seems like ancient history now. European communism collapsed and we still bask in the warmth which thawed East-West relations.

Three days ago women peace campaigners left Greenham Common after exactly 19 years of continuous presence at the nuclear base. Now Shelley House is to be opened as a relic of the atomic age. Such developments confirm that the world has moved on; we are no longer fearful of the nuclear winter.

We may be labouring under a sense of false security, of course. The accident involving the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk was a sharp reminder that this technology remains a real and present danger. Moreover, there are any number of volatile regimes in the post-Cold War world striving to become nuclear powers.

It would be foolish to become preoccupied with such spectres at the expense of our enjoyment of this present sense of peace, however.

And York has a potential new tourist attraction on its hands. The city already boasts exhibitions about Roman and Viking warriors, the Civil War and Yorkshire's role in the world wars. Shelley House, our new nuclear monument, brings the war tour almost up to date.