Cold War

Bashar al-Assad is a child of the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict. These events underpin Syria’s authoritarian regime and its horrific actions.

Roger Howard recalls a moment when Israel was rocked by exaggerated claims of a threat posed by Egypt.

For over half a century, James Bond’s mix of ‘sex, snobbery and sadism’ has proved enduringly popular, outlasting the Cold War that birthed him. Why? 

The battle of Cuito Cuanavale was a key moment in the smokescreen conflict of the Cold War played out in southern Africa. Gary Baines looks at the ways in which opposing sides are now remembering the event.

John Herschel Glenn Jr was the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th 1962.

Depicted as a dangerous extremist and a threat to the civil rights movement, black activist Malcolm X was as much a beneficiary of the media as he was its victim.

Paul Lay pays tribute to the playwright, dissident and former Czech president, who has died aged 75.

Wracked by industrial decline, Britain and France embraced the world’s first supersonic airliner: Concorde.

Andrew Boxer demonstrates the ways in which external events affected the struggles of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

Caught between the end of empire and the birth of NATO, Britain's postwar Labour government played a key role in the early stages of the Cold War.