Living Behind the Iron Curtain

In the second of two episodes about Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, David talks to critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about the novel’s place in the history of feminism. Is its idea of ‘free women’ meant to be ironic? Why are the things that shocked its original readers n ...  Show more

In today’s episode David explores Doris Lessing’s bold and brilliant The Golden Notebook (1962), a book about female emancipation, political disillusionment and much, much more. Why did Lessing insist that the novel’s original critics misunderstood what the book was about? What m ...  Show more

Professor Lea Ypi reflects on her childhood years, which witnessed the final years of communism in Albania and the fraught transition to capitalist democracy. In conversation with Rob Attar, she also considers what these experiences have taught her about the true nature of freedo ...  Show more

Within just a few years of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union had sent the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. An era of renewal and excitement beckoned. Speaking to Danny Bird, Robert Hornsby tells the story of how Soviet society embraced the 1960s – from new ...  Show more

The German Democratic Republic was born in the ashes of the Second World War, and described itself as a socialist “workers’ and peasants’ state”. The country struggled for much of the latter half of the 20th century, relying on economic support and political backing from the USSR ...  Show more

February 22, 1962. The city of Berlin is cut in half by a concrete and barbed wire wall. On the west side, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is giving a rousing speech when suddenly, what look like balloons explode above the crowd, revealing Soviet-red flags. “The Communists w ...  Show more