It was extinction that made Tyneham famous. The fields of the village on the Dorset coast were ideal tank country and when Churchill evacuated it, he vowed that the people could return after the war. Attlee broke the promise and Tyneham became a symbol of unrewarded patriotic sacrifice, or a rural English idyll destroyed by the state. Preserved perfectly by the Army, the village has haunted the English imagination ever since. It was the focus of campaigns by country landowners, ecologists and reactionaries; a cult place of pilgrimage for artists, architects and film-makers. Tyneham's post-war history is full of memorable characters: Lord Goddard, the man who hanged Bentley; Derek Jarman on his dancing ledge; artillery officers conserving butterflies; and Russian generals watching tanks burn at the end of the Cold War. Wright uses this ghost village as a prism through which England can be viewed in new ways. For even before it was emptied of people, the history of Tyneham since the 18th century is full of strange encounters in which mystics and fanatics of all kinds have been attracted to this corner of Dorset.