Tillingham is a small pretty village and civil parish with 1,015 inhabitants in 2001, increasing to 1,058 at the 2011 Census. Located 8 miles (13 km) from Burnham-on-Crouch and 3 miles (4.8 km) from Bradwell-on-Sea, on the Dengie Peninsula which is a Maldon District part of the ceremonial county of Essex in England. It is one of the villages that make up the ancient Dengie Hundred, which is bounded by the North Sea, River Blackwater and River Crouch.

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and southern England is invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.