The Road from East Germany to North Korea
The Cold War forged new international relationships in which physical distance seemed overcome by ideological proximity. In North Korea, East Germany found a fellow traveller – and a fellow victim.
Cold War
Muslim Modernisers on the Silk Road
Uzbekistan was a product of Islamic modernism and Soviet might. Free from the latter, the nation now seeks to foreground the Young Bukharans.
How the South Became Republican
America’s southern states were once strongholds for the Democratic Party. In 1952, Eisenhower decided to win them over.
How Do Europe’s Cold War Divisions Persist?
East was East and West was West – until 1989. The Wall is gone, but are its Cold War demarcations still there?
Interrail: The Trans Europe Express
Interrail gave young Europeans the freedom of the continent in the 1970s. Five decades on, people are still taking the train.
50 Years of Cyprus Divided
Was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 inevitable?
Lessons from Clement Attlee
A British general election rarely results in radical changes, no matter the colour of the rosettes. One exception was Labour’s landslide victory in 1945.
The Korean War of Prisoners
The Korean War began as a conflict over territory. It would become a fight for the asylum of North Korean POWs.
‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans’ by Daniel Cowling review
In Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans: The British Occupation of Germany, 1945-49, Daniel Cowling brings lost stories to light – some of them, at least.
The Publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four
On 8 June 1949, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. His final novel, its themes had been present throughout his literary career.