Artists can tell radically different narratives about the world. In the edited volume British Art in the Nuclear Age their stories create landscapes and links that are not readily exposed by scientists or mainstream media. Part of Ashgate's Histories and Interpretations since 1700 series, the volume offers us a new angle to the often revisited history of the nuclear Cold War. In nine chapters, historians of art, curators, gallery directors and PhD candidates share insights into the nuclear world by way of art. This is a new way of looking at this particular history, and one that comes at a time when artists are yet again asking, “Who killed the world?” (Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015). The book is a timely reminder of the power of representation and the role of the artist in times of political anxiety and nuclear tension.

British Art in the Nuclear Age will be of equal interest to historians of science and art, artists and scientists. The varied, visual responses of the many British artists discussed here create an insight into the ambivalent feelings of the time. Straddling the boundaries of hope and despair, beauty and horror, their artworks negotiate the realities of places such as Hiroshima and the potential of nuclear energy. The artists in the book respond to real places and imagined threats. They work with and against science, both defying and defining such terms as the ‘Cold War’ and ‘nuclear aesthetics’. Although the volume necessarily repeats some Cold War scholarship, it is unique in its focus on the visual and its insistence on the importance of documenting the era through a cultural lens.

The nine chapters are all individual aspects of the story that editor Catherine Jolivette introduces us to: the ambivalent feelings of artists, scientists and the public towards the ‘nuclear’. Carol Jacobi presents the close links between French and Anglo-American artists, and shows familiar artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Alberto Giacometti in a new, nuclear light. Robert Burstow follows with the fascinating links between artist Barbara Hepworth and scientists such as J.D. Bernal. In the third chapter, Christoph Laucht presents a close reading of the Picture Post's reportage of the nuclear age and shows us how the magazine had an ambivalent, yet generally negative, view of the nuclear. Laucht's chapter is an example of the book at its strongest; a close reading of a few examples tells a gripping story. Jolivette's chapter about the Festival of Britain, the Glasgow exhibition on Industrial Power and the Growth and Form exhibition brings together familiar events in a new context. Arguing for the involved artist's interest in presenting a complex representation of the nuclear, the chapter is concerned with the role of the artist as critical interpreter. In Chapter 5 Fiona Gaskin presents strong evidence of the role of the nuclear in landscape art with a focus on Graham Sutherland, Peter Lanyon and Alan Reynolds. Gaskin argues that these examples can be read as metaphors for the danger posed by the nuclear threat. Her independent scholarship is followed up with very interesting footnotes, a detail that all the authors have taken care to perfect. Gregory Salter, in Chapter 6, investigates artist John Brateby's nuclear anxiety through close readings of his portraits. His reading of Jean at the Basin (1955) is especially moving, drawing on contemporary psychoanalysis with the help of Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott. He asks if it is possible that the post-nuclear threat undermined the masculine self and the nuclear family, an important question carefully pursued and debated throughout the chapter. Catherine Spencer presents another close reading of an artist in Chapter 7. Prunella Clough's ‘urbscapes’ are described and discussed beautifully. Spencer has a real gift for engaging with this artist, and the connections she makes between Clough's presumed ‘feminine’ art and her real concern for the nuclear, wrapped in both celebration and anxiety, reappraise the artist who unfortunately is still not a mainstream name. In the penultimate chapter Kate Aspinall discusses another scientist–artist collaboration. Creator of The Ascent of Man television series Jacob Bronowski's use of artist Feliks Topolski is presented as instructive rather than aesthetic. It is an interesting discussion of the role of the artist as illustrator and independent creator, and is relevant to contemporary discussions of the role of artists in science. Simon Martin rounds up the book with the broadest discussion of the volume. Responding to Time magazine's question from 1952, ‘How should a modern artist react to the atomic age?’ (p. 14), he discusses the art history of the period up until 1970, summarizing and making links between and beyond the individual chapters.

This is a collection of voices that we are perhaps not used to meeting in this guise. The reactions of the artists, emerging as illustrators, political actors and horrified spectators, span the human spectrum, and closely mirror the feelings of awe, horror and more felt in the British public at large. Jolivette has succeeded in creating a new subsection of ‘nuclear art history’, collecting in nine chapters voices and narratives unheard and uncomfortable. These are important discussions also today, and the book reminds us of what artists can bring to conversations and decisions about science.