In a way, I think it's the most important thing I've done.

I've never been to the Soviet Union and the main reason for that is I was warned several times by people from the KGB who had defected to the West that it would be very unsafe for me to go there.

I've never been to the Soviet Union and the main reason for that is I was warned several times by people from the KGB who had defected to the West that it would be very unsafe for me to go there,

The very first seed was really in the great Polish crisis of 1980-81, because it seems to me they were losing their nerve. Much earlier, they had that problem in Czechoslovakia (and) they didn't hesitate. They just decided to invade. With Poland, they could have invaded, but again it seemed to me that they were not ready to continue to defy world opinion. And to me this was a serious psychological sign of weakness.

Our wedding coincided with the bombing of the East End of London. It was a very nice day in June and we had a few guests around and it was war time. We had been looking at the sunset. Suddenly, we looked and we saw what appeared to be another sunset on the other side -- that was the bombing of the East End; we didn't realize it. Then we saw air battles going on above us and we realized what was happening.

I've tried to make a book that's accessible to the ordinary, intelligent reader. Very often books that cover this kind of subject are written by academics, for academics. But I am not an academic.