Skip to main content
Conflicted landscape of war and peace
Photographs of Salisbury Plain reveal a vast area of incongruous contrasts, says JOHN GREEN

PART of the chalk downlands stretching over eastern and southern England, the 300 square miles of Salisbury Plain are sparsely populated.

Famous for its rich archaeological sites, including Stonehenge, the heart of this ancient landscape is an eerie and ambiguous space.

Its present sparsely populated state is because large areas have been occupied by the military since 1897 for war-games training.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
THE HORROR REMAINS: (above) ‘The Terror of War’, photograph showing naked Phan Thi Kim Phuc (9 surrounded by brothers and cousins) running down a road near Trang Bang, Vietnam / Pic: Public domain/CC
Culture / 2 January 2026
2 January 2026

If true, the photo’s history is a damning indictment of the systematic exploitation of non-Western journalists by Western media organisations – a pattern that persists today, posit KATE CANTRELL and ALISON BEDFORD

round up
Cinema / 4 December 2025
4 December 2025

LEO BOIX, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Dreamers, It Was Just An Accident, Folktales, and Eternity

stibbon
Exhibition Review / 31 October 2025
31 October 2025

JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis

Mounted police engaging Indigenous Australians during the Slaughterhouse Creek clash of 1838 / Pic: W.Walton after Louisa and Godfrey Charles Mundy/CC
Book Review / 12 September 2025
12 September 2025

HEIDI NORMAN welcomes a new history of the Aboriginal resistance to white settlers in New South Wales