SEPARATED FROM THE MAINLAND by a narrow stretch of the River Ore, Orford Ness is a wild strand of shingle on the Suffolk coast. From 1915 to 1993, it was a Ministry of Defense research laboratory developing technologies of war and death (radar, atomic weaponry) out of public view, its existence not even officially acknowledged. Today, the place feels vast and eerie, more Tarkovsky’s Zone, studded with disused buildings called things like Cobra Mist and Bomb Ballistics. And yet the spit of land we are talking about is only three square miles and sits across the water from the perfectly picturesque