ABSTRACT
Some 22 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union it is very easy to meet and engage with consequences and echoes of the Cold War, even with only a hazy idea of what it was all about. There are signs, for instance, that the Cold War is enjoying renewed attention in fiction, documentary, and film. While a comprehensive survey of the genres lies outside the scope of this study, a snapshot is at least suggestive. In the early months of 2013, it is easy to indulge in new offerings such as Ian McEwan’s 2012 novel Sweet Tooth, whose main characters are spun around MI5 in the 1970s, or the 2011 movie adaptation of John Le Carré’s classic novel about MI6, moles, and betrayal, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Non-English screen titles include two films from 2012: the Chinese offering Silent War, set in the messy intrigues of 1949 Shanghai as the Chinese civil war comes to a climax; and the German film Shores of Hope, set in East Germany’s port of Rostock amidst dissidence and Stasi surveillance in the 1980s. The BBC, furthermore, promises a television season of new works of drama and documentary. Its promotional blurb reads: ‘Fifty years after Britain lived in the shadow of the Cold War, BBC Two is set to explore the cultural and political upheaval of a tumultuous period in history that divided the world in half and shaped modern politics.’1
