UFO Drawings From The National Archives

by David Clarke

Originally set up after a request from Winston Churchill, the Ministry of Defence’s UFO Desk ran for over 60 years, collating mysterious sightings and records of strange objects in the sky from observant, and sometimes imaginative, members of the public. As well as letters and official reports, the UFO files contain photographs, drawings and even paintings of these curious sightings. David Clarke has selected examples from The National Archives to present a history of British UFO art and the remarkable stories behind these images, including an alien craft on the A1, flying saucers over Hampstead, and a spaceship landing at a primary school in Macclesfield.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

120 pages, Hardcover

Published September 18, 2017

Reviews

[Allison E]

I accidentally read a nonfiction book lol. I blame my local little free library.

Did you know that the British government had a literal “UFO desk” from 1962 to 2009 where they would just accept any and all submissions of extraterrestrial evidence from people? (well ok specifically ufos)

Eventually after some public pressure on what all this alien investigation was about, the Ministry of Defense went and released “all its surviving files”. Gasp!

This book is a collection of several of the sus as hell sightings/ records/ drawings/ photos of UFOs. Hilariouslyyy several of them were submitted by children but like, evidence is evidence.

Do I believe in aliens? I give you one guess. -_-

[Joseph Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how they curated this collection of UFO sightings in the UK, listed chronologically and presented with illustrations and photos from many kinds of different people. David Clark doesn’t to impose too much rationality onto each sighting and kind of allows each sighting to be what it is without giving too much of a personal take.

[Eric Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with their American intelligence and military counterparts, the UK Ministry of Defence did their best to explain away most UFO observations as mistakes of perception and overactive imaginations responding to explainable atmospheric phenomena or human technology, with photographic evidence resulting from distortions or hoaxing or other fakery. Included among the roughly 11,000 reported sightings in the Ministry’s decades-long investigation of the UFO phenomenon (1940s-2009), when the Ministry’s UFO desk and telephone hotline, initiated in 1962, were closed, are hundreds of eyewitness-provided illustrations featuring puzzling and at times unexplainable imagery, consisting of everything from hand-drawn recreations to professionally-produced and incredibly detailed diagrams, to photographs of varying quality and detail.

Notwithstanding the Ministry’s efforts, a not insignificant percentage of reported sightings remained truly unexplainable. In UFO Drawings from the National Archives, a co-publication between Four Corners and the National Archives, Dr. David Clarke, researcher and author of the recent history of the UFO phenomenon, the excellent, precise How UFOs Conquered the World (2015) and consultant on the public release of the Ministry of Defence's considerable holdings of UFO files, presents a carefully curated sampling of drawings (some of them are photographs) that accompanied these reports. Included here are familiar images – including the now-discredited ‘Solway Spaceman’ photograph – as well as more obscure yet no less fascinating and unsettling anomalies.

Clarke presents the material in chronological order with prefatory, matter-of-fact summaries of reports, largely without editorial comment. The chronological ordering provides the reader with a general sense of the UFO phenomenon's complexity, and the bewildering variety of its manifestations, including the different shapes, sizes, colours, sounds, and movements, as well as a sense of the ways in which the phenomenon has remained consistent over time in the face of significant social and cultural transformations over a sixty year period. At the same time, Clarke's straightforward presentation serves to illustrate the phenomenon's growing complexity, with decidedly technological cigar and saucer-shaped objects making their appearance during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by more high strangeness, close encounter-oriented reports documented in the 1970s and 1980s, and finally a swath of abduction-related and crop circle accounts popping up from the late 80s to the late 90s.

Clarke's introduction provides a useful, concise history of the Ministry of Defence's involvement in collecting data on the UFO phenomenon. Though most of the drawings provided by eyewitnesses to the Ministry are mostly without pretence, comprised primarily of pragmatic attempts by earnest eyewitnesses (some crackpot but mostly sober) to document apparently unexplainable atmospheric phenomena, some of the artwork included here approaches a kind of folk art. Indeed, despite Clarke's journalistic approach, there is much here of interest to the sociologist, folklorist, or UFO historian, making UFO Drawings from the National Archives are worthy addition to any Fortean library. -- Eric Hoffman, Fortean Times

[Martin Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love UFO drawings from witness who are obviously not artists. There's something just very endearing about them.
My favourite part of the book isn't even a witness drawing though. It's the little alien doodle someone did on an official UFO form!

[Ray Quirolgico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully designed and produced, succinctly written to be unbiased and intriguing. A delight to page through.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very entertaining and informative look at the seldom discussed the topic but an interesting one nonetheless. Will it make a believer no, but the artwork and reports are fun read.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating as both Forteana and outsider art. The meat of this book is a series of artworks -- mostly drawing or paintings, but including a few photos -- that were submitted to the British Ministry of Defense during the period when the MoD kept files on UFO sightings. Each artwork is accompanied by a brief summary of the sighting it purports to illustrate. A genuinely interesting book, regardless of how one feels about the underlying phenomena in question.