cold war

Real life Smiley’s people and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy! I know that he knows, but does he know that I know he knows that I know he knows? Just when you thought you were beginning to think you understood things, along comes Nigel West and turns it all upside down: a deeply researched book which...

John Bishop was one of the few hundred young men specially selected post-war by the Royal Navy to do their National Service as Coders (Special), a group trained as Russian linguists and employed in northern Germany to listen to Soviet radio circuits. His reminiscences here take the form of a...

The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945 James Jinks & Peter Hennessy, Allen Lane, London, ISBN 978-1846145803 This is a heavyweight book in every sense, notably in the £30 hardcover edition. It has already paid for itself as it provided a welcome distraction from the...

To a submariner who joined up after the Cold War ended, the era evokes a time when submariners were the kings, and were the front line. It is always sobering and instructive to be reminded of the tensions that lay beneath the smooth Tom Clancy-like image of cold, calculated professionalism and...