Like us, you probably didn’t give much thought to how Polish troops might find their way around Essex in the event of a Soviet bloc invasion in the 1980s.

Someone clearly did though. A map of the UK was produced to aid the Polish army should they ever start driving their tanks up the A12. The maps are published in a new book called The Red Atlas and here’s their take on our familiar Essex place names …

(click for bigger version)

Note that these aren’t the Polish names for towns, but just how a Pole would pronounce them if they saw the English name. So for example BRENTWOOD turns into BRENTŁUD, because the Ł character in Poland roughly translates to our W. (And you can’t believe how long it took us to find the Ł key on our keyboard).

We’re grateful that the invasion never happened and we didn’t have to play Polish military songs on the radio all day, although that would still be preferable to Ed Sheeran.

The map is one of many appearing in The Red Atlas, which prints a number of maps the Soviets used to help its military. The book is available to buy from this website, price £26.50.