In the summer of 2021, an art installation called An English Garden was planted in Gunners Park, Southend. This neatly tended flower bed, planted with Rosa floribunda - Atom Bomb - roses, along with wooden benches and plaques drew a connection between this site in Essex and the Montebello Islands off Western Australia where Britain tested its first atomic weapon on the 3rd of October 1952. The work issued a gentle invitation for visitors to reflect on Britain’s “historical and ongoing identity as a colonial nuclear state”.

Britain tested twelve full scale atomic weapons and conducted hundreds of ‘minor trials’ on Australian soil between 1952 and 1963, as well as further tests off Kiritimati (Christmas Island), a colony of Britain at the time in the south Pacific.

Seventy years on from that first atomic test, former servicemen and their families, Pacific islanders and indigenous communities in Australia, are still living in the shadow of these bombs.

This first of five episodes traces the events leading up to Britain’s first atomic detonation, codenamed Operation Hurricane, with investigative journalist Susie Boniface, author and researcher Dr Elizabeth Tynan and the artist Gabriella Hirst who continues to propagate Atom Bomb roses through grafting workshops and talks.

The series is presented by Steve Purse whose late father, Flight Lieutenant David Purse, served at Maralinga, South Australia in 1963.

Includes music by Barney Morse-Brown (aka Duotone)
Produced by Hannah Dean with assistance from Michael Bromage and Dimity Hawkins
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
(Photograph courtesy of Steve Purse.) Show less