For Whom the Bell Tolls is of course a Hemingway title. It tolls for thee, I know, but I don’t know anything else about it, except it’s set in the Spanish Civil War.
The more I looked at this image from Crispina Kemp for this week’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge, the more I saw. And I heard bells tolling. The big challenge: to distill my thoughts from this picture into 150 words…
CCC038 For Whom the Bell Tolls
You can’t miss it. Sizewell B nuclear power station. The blot on the landscape.
Next door the coast drops down and marks the site of the RSPB’s premier bird reserve, Minsmere. Then the species-rich heath to its right, that runs a few miles along the coastline: Dunwich Heath.
There’s a road from the inland main road to Dunwich. It ends abruptly at a cliff edge. Dunwich, victim of erosion, lies beneath the sea. They say the church bell tolls on stormy days, and when the tide is lowest you may still see the jumbled stones.
What you can see is the power of the waves in the foreground, running in between the groynes. All that power, wasted.
Blame Thatcher. She stopped wavepower research to promote nuclear despite its risks. Constant energy supply: tides, currents and wind-whipped waves. My tutor’s life’s work, unused.
That bell tolls for thee.
© J M Pett 2025
PS. This week the government announced billion pound funding for Sizewell C. Words fail me.
I like how you’ve treated this. And yes, all those places, with their histories, do lie within the view of my camera at that place. An excellent summary which somehow is more.. perhaps the opening chapter of a book?
Great book!
Clicked send before I had finished…. That’s a very atmospheric photo and with The power station looming in the distance it is an weird sight 💜💜
I could wish you’d go to writing horror fiction. It’s less scary than this simple bit of history, with the insane post-script. 🙁
Hear hear! mind you, I blame Thatcher for most things.
Evocative piece, Jemima, with great use of the image, plus Hemingway’s Bells. I recommend his book. A depressing PS given all the anti-nuclear and green movements have campaigned for, many in the Labour Party. Haven’t the alternatives proved themselves?