The Cold War was one of the furthest reaching and longest lasting conflicts in modern history. It grew out of the vacuum and disarray in Europe at the end of the Second World War, and lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991. It spanned the globe, starting as a battle between Western Allies and Stalin’s Soviet Russia for control and influence over what had been Occupied Europe, then spreading to Asia when China ‘went Red’, and in later years extending its impact to Africa, Latin America and the Middle East – affecting countries all over the world. It also helped shape some of the attitudes and stand offs we see today, the recent tensions between Russia and the West being the best example.

So what did it feel like to live through the Cold War, for citizens and for journalists? Bridget Kendall, who was BBC Moscow correspondent when the Berlin Wall fell and when the Soviet Union collapsed, draws on both her own eyewitness experiences and also the testimony she collected for a BBC landmark oral history series for Radio Four covering four decades of the Cold War, to explore what it meant for ordinary people who found themselves at some of the key episodes of the Cold War, and to reflect on what those experiences tell us about the uncertain world we find ourselves in today.

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