I’ve got lots of posts lined up which I’m intending to write sometime soon, but real life keeps getting in the way and now I’m in bed with flu and barely lucid enough to open up the laptop, let alone post. However, this one is time-specific so I’m doing it now before I forget: if you’re in or near London, this exhibition of war photos from Iraq and Afghanistan is full of startling pictures that you won’t see anywhere else, and is well worth paying a visit to.

Some of the photos are quite gory – but then, so is war. More distressing to me, though, were the ones showing the fear in the faces of civilians suddenly confronted by British or American soldiers. We’ll never see photos like these in our mainstream media, because they make it clear that the relationships between ordinary people of the countries involved and our armed forces are difficult and painful, which makes it much harder to argue that we’re anywhere near winning “the battle for hearts and minds”. In fact, in these snippets from daily life we look more like a hostile invading force, which one might argue is exactly what we are. Chilling, heartbreaking and not for the squeamish, but absolutely worth seeing.

More details and info from Great Western Studios.