In this paper Timberlake outlines aspects of his creative practice as an artist, explaining his fascination for the ‘fictions of nuclear war’ – a war that never happened and so became the subject of ‘false memory’. Highlighting discontinued historical trajectories, the author shows how the cultural legacy of Britain’s nuclear test programme of the 1950s and ’60s may be explored meaningfully in paintings and photography resulting from his archival research at the Imperial War Museum in London.