Seventy years ago, on an island off Australia, we started something we couldn’t finish. This is the story of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident — why we have it and why we can’t let go of it.

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Prof Mary Kaldor is Director of the Conflict Research Programme at LSE IDEAS.

Dr Matthew Grant is Reader and Head of the School of Philosophy, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex. His forthcoming book Britain's Cold War Home Front: Citizens and the State will be published by Oxford University Press, and he is the author of National Service Life Stories: Masculinity, Class, and the Memory of Conscription in Britain.

The Operation Hurricane public information movie (1953) is available on YouTube, as is Bertrand Russell’s 1959 speech at the Manchester Free Trade Hall and The Prime Minister’s TOP SECRET trip to a nuclear submarine (10 Downing Street). Parliamentary speeches read by Seth Thévoz are in Hansard. The extract from the West Australian newspaper is in the National Library of Australia.

I also drew on Suzanne Doyle’s Preserving the Global Nuclear Order: The Trident Agreements and the Arms Control Debate, 1977-82 (International History Review), Matthew Grant’s Upgrading Britain's nuclear deterrent: from V-Bombers to Trident replacement (History and Policy), Nick Ritchie’s Trident and British Identity: Letting go of nuclear weapons and Ian Davis’ The British Bomb and NATO: Six Decades of Contributing to NATO’s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent (SIPRI/ Nuclear Education Trust). The Commons library briefing Replacing the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent: Progress of the Dreadnought Class was also useful.