Britain & the Bomb

In Britain and the Bomb Bill Nuttall draws upon insights from the laboratories, the military, popular culture and from politicians to make sense of a complex time and to challenge some widely-held perceptions that Britain in the 1960s lost her technical ambition and ability.  If you are enjoying the podcast please leave a written reviews … Read more

Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War

  The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines -including … Read more

The Cold War Berlin spy tunnel – Operation Gold

Operation Gold (also known as Operation Stopwatch by the British) was a joint operation conducted by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1950s to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone. Steve Vogel is … Read more

British Forces in Germany: The Lived Experience 1945-2019

Dr Peter Johnston is the Head of Collections Research and Academic Access at the National Army Museum in London and the author of a lavishly illustrated military and social history of the British forces in Germany during the Cold War. < Now if you like the podcast you can help to support us  for the ... Read more

Mark – Eyewitness to the events of 1989

Mark Baker was a journalist in Vienna who covered Czechoslovakia during the 1980s. In a wide ranging conversations we discuss the events of 1989 with Mark providing some vivid accounts of his experiences and how events were viewed at the time. Now as I’m sure you know some of our fans who are helping the … Read more

The early days of the US Space program and origins of GPS

  Richard Easton is the co-author of GPS Declassified which examines the development of GPS or Sat Nav as some of us call it now, from its secret, Cold War military roots. Roger Easton, Richard’s father, assisted in laying the foundations for the GPS system.  However, Roger Easton also worked on the early US space program and … Read more

The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

  In a world divided by the ideological struggles of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, more than one-fifth of the people on the planet paused to watch the live transmission of the Apollo 11 mission. To watch as humanity took a giant leap forward exactly 50 years ago. Now … Read more

Cold War alternate history – Liberation Square

  Gareth Rubin is an author and journalist and today we’re talking to him about his latest novel, Liberation Square set in a Soviet occupied UK in the 1950s. Buy the book on this link and support the podcast Thanks to  our select band of supporters who are helping us financially for the price of … Read more