What happens when a teenage runaway steps straight into one of the most extraordinary protest movements in British history—and discovers that rebellion can be both chaotic and life-changing?

That question sits at the heart of Fallout, the new novel from Chiddingfold-based author Eleanor Anstruther, which revisits the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp through the eyes of 15-year-old Bridget, who flees home and finds herself drawn into a world of radical protest, unexpected community and political awakening.

Born into aristocracy, Anstruther ultimately chose to walk her own path when she dropped out of university to travel the world and found a pagan commune. After 12 years living in the commune and overcoming drug addiction, she returned to writing and now lives in Chiddingfold, Surrey, where she continues to develop work rooted in questions of identity, freedom and belonging.

“Greenham is such a rich setting for fiction,” she said. “A moving cast of thousands of women living for nineteen years around a nine-mile perimeter fence that encases bombs – what's not to love about that?!”

She believes the protest has been repeatedly misunderstood. “It lasted nineteen years in all," she said. “It was about the bombs and about reclaiming the land... there is one reason and one reason only why it has been overlooked in mainstream histories, and that is sexism.”

Anstruther draws on her own activist past, recalling nights spent at protest camps. “I have been an activist from a very early age. Bridget comes from a very different background to me, but it was her arrival at Greenham where I felt my own story merge with hers."

She is also clear that Greenham is often simplified in popular memory.

“It was a matter of conscience and an argument that could not be quelled,” she said. “Greenham women knew they were on the right side of history."

Fallout is out now and available to buy.