Under the Mushroom Cloud
The Cold War has become this year’s hot media topic. Taylor Downing welcomes the chance to look more critically at the era of ‘mutually assured destruction’.
Cold War
CND: The Story of a Peace Movement
Sue Donnelly introduces the archives of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and a project to make them accessible to a wider audience.
The Cuban Missile Crisis
John Swift examines the events that led the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.
The Dark Side of the Moon
John Kennedy’s commitment to put a man on the Moon in the 1960s is often quoted as an inspired civic vision. Gerard DeGroot sees the reality somewhat differently.
The Berlin Wall: A Secret History
The Berlin Wall was a tangible symbol of the suppression of human rights by the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, but Frederick Taylor asks whether it was more convenient to the Western democracies than their rhetoric suggested.
Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’
Fifty years after Khrushchev’s famous denunciation of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, John Etty examines what was at stake.
From Kennedy’s Cold War to the War on Terror
Gareth Jenkins looks for continuities in American foreign policy from the 1960s to the 2000s.
The First Hydrogen Bomb
The first US airdrop of a thermonuclear bomb happened on May 20th, 1956.
The My Lai Massacre
Kendrick Oliver revisits the scene of a crime that became a watershed in public perceptions of the Vietnam war.
Britain’s Defence Policy in a Nuclear Age
Ian Cawood shows how British policy-makers adapted to the changing world after 1945.