Iain MacGregor: Checkpoint Charlie

The Book Club

In this week's Book Club podcast we anticipate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Wall going up by talking to Iain MacGregor about his book Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall And The Most Dangerous Place On Earth. He tells me how, and why, the Russians cut a city in half overnight; and why we let them. He describes how events in Tiananmen Square reached Friedrichstrasse. And how, as the Wall came down, a single British soldier did something that the Red Army never forgot.