‘When monsters in horror movies roar grotesquely into view, it’s often the revelation that they’ve been there all along that’s the big scare. It’s a powerful trope: the axe murderer is locked in the house with you, the bomb is in the attic. We have always known that the US military does some dubious things to protect us. It has had to, we understand, for the safety and happiness of the free world; it has been constantly at war for peace for the best part of a century. Every so often, though, its monstrous identity is fully revealed. Too quickly, normality resumes, and the beast blends back into the shadows. The world moves on.’

Venetia Welby reviews Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange for Review31. You can read the review here. We will be publishing Dreamtime by Venetia Welby in March 2021. There’s information on Dreamtime on the Waterstones website here now.