The idea of a “Museum of Childhood” has always struck me as faintly sinister – the sort of Victorian institution you could imagine cropping up in a Tim Burton film, quite possibly stocked with live specimens. It’s a relief therefore that as part of a £13m reimagining of its original east London outpost, the V&A has not only extensively refurbished its historic building, but also ditched the old name and rebranded the museum as the “Young V&A”.

What hasn’t changed is the location. Young V&A still occupies the rather foreboding structure that was transposed to Bethnal Green from Albertopolis in 1872. I first visited this cavernous building as a child in the 1980s, and I remember thinking even then that it was a somewhat austere setting for a museum supposedly dedicated to childhood.

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