List of Illustrations

The grim precincts of Shepton Mallet prison today. When it was decommissioned in 2013 it was the country’s oldest gaol, having been in continuous use for nearly 400 years.

Inside a cell at Shepton Mallet: a bed frame, a lavatory bowl, a sink. I banged the door closed and immediately wondered how long I could resist the temptation to fling it open again.

Former ‘lifer’ Ben Gunn at Shepton Mallet. ‘Life and circumstance can lead you to a situation. How you deal with those circumstances – that’s you.’

In 1944 a black GI, Leroy Henry, was sentenced to death at Shepton Mallet for the rape of a white woman. His case became a cause célèbre.

A petition signed by thousands urged a review of his conviction, and General Eisenhower stepped in to revoke Henry’s death sentence and exonerate him.

Some of Shepton Mallet’s most famous ‘inmates’ were not felons at all, but documents from the National Archives, sent here for safekeeping in World War Two. They included the logs of HMS Victory and, seen here, the Domesday Book (left) and Magna Carta (right).

In 1952 Ronnie and Reggie Kray were a couple of jack-the-lads from London’s East End with a few pro boxing fights under their belts. Their time at Shepton Mallet set them on a path of career criminality.

An Edwardian extravaganza, then and now: the London Road Fire Station in Manchester served the community for eighty years. It wasn’t just ambitious in its design, it became a ‘one-stop shop’ for death and disaster by incorporating a police station and a coroner’s court on its premises.

Originally a residential fire station, it provided thirty-two flats for families of the firefighters.

The well-appointed gymnasium, with high ceilings and large windows, where you can imagine the men training for the physically arduous demands of fighting fires.

Firefighters in World War Two, when crew numbers were increased tenfold to cope with the threat of air raids.

The damaged branch pipe held by Roy Skelton and William Varah, who lost their lives in the ‘Christmas Blitz’ of 1940. Thirty Manchester firefighters were killed in the war.

Female operators in the control room, 1950. One of their unofficial roles was to be good listeners to the firemen who returned from distressing call-outs.

The Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, killed five young people in Manchester between 1963 and 1965.

A police officer based at London Road Police Station investigated the disappearance of one of their victims, Lesley Ann Downey. Officers at the station worked on the murder investigations that followed.

In the Moss Side riots of 1981, firefighters and police officers from London Road came under attack from rioters. ‘You don’t have any control over what happens, you just do what you’ve signed up to do,’ one fireman told me. ‘That is, save life, save property, render humanitarian services.’

The original Royal London Hospital, with its imposing Georgian façade.

A helicopter of the London Air Ambulance fleet on the roof of the new Royal London Hospital. I met a trauma doctor – and the patient he saved.

Charles Booth’s ‘poverty map’ of London from 1889, showing the most deprived areas in dark blue and black. The Royal London was in one of the poorest areas.

Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, was exhibited by showman

Tom Norman in a shop opposite the Royal London Hospital.

Merrick’s doctor, Frederick Treves, who was a regular visitor to Merrick’s rooms in the hospital and formed a friendship with him.

The infamous ‘From Hell’ letter, purporting to be from Jack the Ripper, which was sent to the chairman of the local vigilance committee, along with half a kidney. This was examined by Thomas Openshaw of the Royal London Hospital, who confirmed it was human. One of the Ripper’s victims, Catherine Eddowes, had a kidney removed.

The first X-ray machines were introduced at the Royal London Hospital in 1896. The results were groundbreaking but the dangers of radiation were not understood, which is why early radiographers were happy to use their hands as test objects. Four of them at the hospital lost their lives to radiation malignancy.

An archaeological excavation of the old burial ground of the Royal London Hospital in 2006 yielded the remains of at least 259 people and traces of 111 coffins, dating from the first half of the nineteenth century.

‘We didn’t just find complete individuals,’ one of the archaeologists told me. ‘We also found dissected remains.’

The unabashed magnificence of Cambridge Military Hospital. Only the finest surroundings would do for the fighting forces of the mightiest nation on earth.

A dressing station for the wounded on the Western Front. Casualties with minor wounds were recycled back into front-line fighting. Those with more serious injuries were shipped back to England, to hospitals such as the Cambridge in Aldershot.

Social reformer Florence Nightingale wrote a report based on her experiences in the Crimean War which led to a revolution in medical care and resulted in purpose-built facilities such as the Cambridge Military Hospital. It was built on the ‘Nightingale Plan’, with an emphasis on space and light.

In 1915, a young doctor called Harold Gillies persuaded the authorities to open a unit at the Cambridge dedicated to the treatment of soldiers’ facial injuries. Here he performed miraculous feats of facial reconstruction.

The surgical room and specialist staff at the Cambridge Military Hospital.

Harold Gillies pioneered the technique known as the ‘tubed pedicle’, a procedure that involved moving skin grafts stage by stage up to the patient’s face.

The tube-like graft is here attached to the patient’s arm. The procedure of moving the graft was known as ‘waltzing the pedicle’ and could take many months.

Second World War Spitfire ace Robert Cowell, who became Roberta Cowell when Harold Gillies performed one of the first ever gender reassignment procedures from male to female.

As Roberta Cowell she maintained her love of motor racing.

From the mid-nineteenth century, when it became popular as a seaside resort, ‘Merry Doctor Brighton’ was considered a place of great health-giving properties. In fact, its poor sewerage led to numerous cholera outbreaks – until an extensive sewer system was built and Brighton recovered its reputation for ‘health and pleasure’.

In 1849 a report revealed the polluted state of Brighton’s water supply.

In the nineteenth century cholera was prevalent throughout the world. This American notice shows that its causes were poorly understood.

Between 1869 and 1874 more than £100,000 (the equivalent of £6.5 million today) was spent to construct a vast network of sewers beneath Brighton.

Millions of tons of earth were removed, not by mechanical diggers but by the sweat of labourers using picks and shovels. The resulting tunnels were braced with timbers and lined with an estimated 7 million bricks.

Albert Nash, the village blacksmith, a figure who summed up Imber’s traditions and continuity. His descendants help to keep Imber’s memory alive.

Outside the Norman church in Imber, the sole structure still intact in the otherwise desolate village.

The once picturesque village, before the outbreak of World War Two – a ‘straggling street of old cottages and farmsteads’.

On 22 January 1961, aggrieved locals and former villagers descended on Imber to stage a protest. They hoisted a banner and carried placards that declared ‘Forever Imber’.

During the war and after, the village suffered terribly, both from neglect and bombardment.

The old cottages were shot to pieces.

One of the ‘Pagodas’ at Orford Ness, Suffolk, built in 1960 for the testing of weapons of fearsome power. The remote coastal site was ideally suited to highly classified military research.

An aerial view of the forest of masts, or array, of the Cobra Mist radar system. Now dismantled, this was just one of a plethora of bizarre structures on Orford Ness that are testament to the experiments and initiatives that took place there.

Outside Cobra Mist. It stands some 70 feet high, is built on piles that are sunk 90 feet in the marsh and occupies 40,000 square feet over two floors – a behemoth of a building that could have been a human outpost on Mars.

Les Barton, who answered an ad in the local paper and was assigned to a team that subjected atomic bombs to extreme environmental pressures.

Inside Cobra Mist.

The first operational nuclear bomb, Blue Danube, was tested at Orford Ness.

Professor John Allen, Head of the Bomb Targeting Unit, was part of the team that carried out tests on Blue Danube.

Robert Watson-Watt, who pioneered radar technology at Orford Ness. He was instrumental in creating a network of radar stations known as Chain Home that was operational along much of the south and east coasts of Britain by the beginning of World War Two.

The nuclear bunker at Cambridge, built in 1953 as the Cold War was hotting up. It was designated RSG-4 (Regional Seat of Government-4), one of twelve top secret facilities that, in theory at least, would have ensured the continued functioning of the country during a nuclear war.

A map of the RSG locations across the country. Each RSG would have had representatives of the main government departments. The idea was that if one or more RSGs were destroyed the others could take up the slack.

BBC journalist Michael Barton. In 1953, he was chosen to staff one of the bunkers. His role would have been to keep the populace informed by radio broadcasts.

Peace protestors Ruth and Nicholas Walter. In 1963 they broke into one of the RSG bunkers with the aim of exposing Britain’s secret nuclear plans.

US president John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev found a way to step back from the brink of nuclear war.

A Foxtrot-class submarine, the workhorse of the Soviet fleet. They played a central role in a key moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One is now moored on the River Medway in Kent.

During the Cold War, Foxtrot-class subs patrolled British waters to gather intelligence on British naval strength. They had a crew of seventy-eight, could dive to a depth of 1,000 feet and were capable of remaining submerged for up to ten days.

Britain’s own nuclear weapons were carried on long-range Avro Vulcan bombers and had to be dropped over targets in the Soviet Union. In October 1962, nuclear-armed Vulcans came within minutes of being deployed.

The log book of Peter West, who was air crew on a nuclear-armed Vulcan based at RAF Coningsby: ‘26-28 Oct 62. Cuban Missile Crisis. Squadron at readiness state 15’. This meant they were on 15 minutes’ notice to take off.

The New Victoria Cinema, Bradford, on its opening day, 22 September 1930.

In its heyday, the golden age of Hollywood films and musicals, it was one of the biggest and grandest movie theatres in the country.

In 1950, the New Vic changed its name to the Gaumont and re-invented itself as the biggest indoor live music venue in the north of England, playing host to The Beatles (pictured here by Paul Berriff) among others.

Backstage at the New Vic in October 1964, five-year-old Karen Grimaldi prepares to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to an expectant John Lennon. But when the moment came she was tongue-tied.

Paul as a rookie photographer in the early 1960s.

Graham Bird was the last projectionist to work at the cinema before it closed forever in 2000. When he was fourteen he saw Star Wars here – and fell in love with the magic of film.

The campaign to save the New Vic garnered powerful backing from the likes of David Hockney and Alan Bennett, and culminated in a day of action, on 14 July 2007, named the ‘Hug the Odeon’ event.

The West Pier in Brighton. When it opened in 1866 it was essentially an open deck for promenading, graced with six villas in an oriental style to add a touch of glamour.

Brighton railway station, which opened to London trains in 1841. The railway brought mass tourism to Brighton and on busy days the pleasure piers were thronged with thousands. In 1919 more than 2 million paid to go on the West Pier.

The Prince of Wales made Brighton his bolthole of choice, solidifying its reputation as a pleasure and health resort.

All sorts of ‘aquatic entertainments’ took place at the end of the West Pier.

Familiar seaside characters: Punch and Judy have captivated generations of children.

A haunting spectacle. The sea that gives Brighton its uniquely vibrant identity has all but reclaimed its most iconic monument.

The idea of the pier lives on in Brighton’s newest attraction, the i360.

On 12 October 1984, a bomb planted in the Grand Hotel in Brighton by the IRA killed five people and left several with permanent disabilities. The targets were the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and members of her government.

Mrs Thatcher declares that ‘all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail’.

When The Grand Hotel reopened nearly two years later, it was a symbolic moment of renewal and defiance.