BBC has launched a series of programmes on the Cold War. On BBC Television, they have aired "Strange Days : Cold War Britain", written and made by Dominic Sandbrook, a historian who seems to be specialising in post-war history.
I have watched this three part programme and I found it to be very interesting. As I was born in 1953 I recognise many of the events and issues, participated in some and with friends sat up long into the night discussing them, usually with a large quantity of alcoholic lubrication. I enjoyed the programme and I recommend them.
By coincidence, the film "High Treason" arrived in the mail on Friday from Lovefilm. This film is discussed in programme one as an example of the anti-USSR paranoia that was prevalent at the time. This British made film from 1951 had a storyline of left-wing saboteurs working in Britain as part of a wider Soviet plot. The saboteurs were not trade unionists or CNDers but intellectuals with a love of modern music and duffel coats, rather prescient as the major spies found in Britain to be working for the USSR, Burgess, McLean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross, were all at Cambridge together.
The BBC is scheduled to show more programmes in this Cold War series.
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| Dominic Sandbrook in Moscow, photo from BBC website |
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| The saboteurs in their duffle coats |
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