"It's large format work and it's quite beautiful (Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology may be the most recognised photography of sea defences but that's a different kind of book) . Everything is shot in subdued diffused light, the pre-dawn it looks like much of the time, and the way in which the different defences merge and crumble into the landscape of which they are now part . The Last Stand is as multi-layered as the landscapes which it features; there's historical detail wrapped folded over into a chronotopia of functional brutalism, mixed with local touches that feeds into the geological, panoramic and tactical. All the boxes are ticked in Robert Adams traditional landscape list: there's geography, autobiography, and metaphor. But on top of that, Wilson gives us a politicised view of landscape and power that ties back to survey photography of Timothy O'Sullivan and the work of Mitch Epstein. Layered into that is an Arcadian vision. With its focus on Northern Europe it's a dystopian Arcadia; there is a pagan feel to Wilson's pictures, a syncretic vision where geology, flora, climate and war find a single expression. And it's beautiful.

" --Colin Pantall, photographer.