“There was big poster company [in the UK] called ‘Athena’, and they sold posters in shops around the country. Their third, most popular poster was an enormous picture of a nuclear explosion, which had been air-brushed and in colour. I wanted to show something much more gritty and more horrific. With this work, I was walking down by the Thames, and I saw a pub boat on fire, and I photographed it. The top part of the image is an actual boat on the River Thames, and the water on the left-hand size is in fact the Thames. I saw it as an image of Britain. There’s a lot of paint on this one – gouache, oil and ink – to make a tangible image.” – Peter Kennard