THESE TOWERS WILL ONE DAY SLIP INTO THE SEA

Bouncing bombs. A Saxon shore. An eroding coastline.

Gary Budden has been fascinated with Reculver and its towers, dominating the skyline on the north Kent coast,England, a few miles east from the town of Herne Bay, for his entire life.

Always pulled back to walk its crumbling sandstone cliffs at constant threat from the encroaching sea; watching the colony of nesting sand martins burrowed deep into the stone. Amazed by the ruined twelfth-century church on the site of a seventh-century monastery, itself on the site of a Roman fort built to defend against invading Saxons, in the place where the British Army tested the bouncing bomb.

A riot of histories, invasion, innovation, assimilation.

As part of Kickstarter's Make 100 initiative, and joining forces with renowned landscape artist Maxim Griffin once more, These Towers Will One Day Slip Into the Sea is the follow up to 2019’s The White Heron Beneath the Reactor: a new illustrated landscape punk book exploring the windswept and evocative landscapes of Reculver, and its dizzying layers of history and human narrative.

FUNDING ON KICKSTARTER NOW

SUITE 212

You can now listen to my interview on Resonance FM, on the Suite 212 show hosted by Tom Overton and Juliet Jacques.

I was on the show discussing Hollow Shores, Judderman and the upcoming The White Heron Beneath the Reactor, covering a range of topics including Derek Jarman, Dungeness, punk rock, birdwatching and the apocalypse. Enjoy!

THE WHITE HERON BENEATH THE REACTOR

A fully illustrated 64-page hardback book about Dungeness, white egrets, climate change, Europe and apocalypse. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.

White herons. Nuclear power. The desert of the south-east.

Gary Budden, a lifelong bird-lover, returned to Dungeness in Kent – famous for its shingle desert, its nuclear power station, and Derek Jarman’s cottage – in the autumn of 2018 on a bird-watching trip. In the car park of the RSPB reserve, he watched greenfinches on a bird-feeder for the first time in several years – birds once commonplace, now under threat of extinction.

Entering the reserve, he saw the bird he had come to see: the great white egret, a towering white heron among the reeds, visible to the naked eye even from afar. Common on mainland Europe, but, a rarity and a source of excitement in the United Kingdom. Until now.  

As part of Kickstarter's Make 100 initiative, and working with renowned landscape artist Maxim Griffin, The White Heron Beneath the Reactor is an illustrated landscape punk essay exploring the bleak, otherworldly and captivating landscapes of Dungeness, the effects of climate change and a warming world, our relationship with continental Europe, and the looming fear of apocalypse.

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The author and artist have collaborated on a number of previous projects (such as Heaven is a Marsh in Winter), as well as continuing their ongoing solo investigations into the strangeness of the British landscape. They like working together and seeing how words and images can work together; how collaboration produces something unique that neither individual would have produced. 

Inspired by their favourite limited releases from obscure punk, psychedelic and folk labels, and the lavishly produced, extremely limited weird fiction books they covet, Gary and Maxim decided to create something similar. The Make 100 initiative seemed perfect for what they wanted to create. The White Heron Beneath the Reactor is a poetic interrogation of place and landscape in the current political climate; it is also a beautifully produced collector's item for the bibliophile in all of us. 

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The book is LIMITED TO 100 hardback copies, with full colour illustrations.

With your help, we make this book a reality.  

Pledge here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1194866830/make-100-the-white-heron-beneath-the-reactor