Anthony Blunt gave his Russian spymasters a collection of Royal letters so compromising, it could have been used to blackmail the Windsors, according to a leading figure in the KGB. Written by the Queen’s uncles, the Dukes of Windsor and Kent, to their German relatives, the correspondence is likely to show the depth of their … Read more
She stalked Nato ships during the Cold War, lurking in the depths of the ocean on long-range patrols. And these photographs show just what a grim job it would have been for those on board. They show the poky interior of a Foxtrot-class Soviet submarine called B-143, operational from 1960 to 1991 and which would … Read more
On the whole, the architecture of the former Soviet Union was uniform and dreary – but a recently published photography book reveals that there were some gems, from a ‘flying saucer’ building to an office block that resembles a game of Jenga. Soviet Cities: Labour, Life & Leisure was created by Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK AGENT SONYA by Ben Macintyre (Viking £25, 416 pp) Her scones were the envy of the Oxfordshire hamlet of Great Rollright, where the friendly woman known as Mrs Burton lived in a stone farmhouse. In her late 30s, she moved there with her three children and husband Len just after the … Read more
Neighbours in the tranquil Oxfordshire village of Great Rollright knew housewife Mrs Burton for the scrumptious taste of her scones in the summer of 1945. But they had no idea she was actually top Soviet spy Ursula Kuczynski, who came close to blowing up Adolf Hitler before Joseph Stalin got cold feet. Kuczynski, code-named Sonya, nearly averted the … Read more
Winston Churchill said he would consider bombing Russia and China if he was Prime Minister during the Cold War, a newly-discovered memo has revealed. The then-76-year-old World War II hero told former-US army officer Julius Ochs Adler that if he ‘could secure the agreement’ of the US government he would give the Soviet Union ‘an ultimatum’. … Read more
Young Heroes Of The Soviet Union Alex Halberstadt Jonathan Cape £14.99 Rating: Alex Halberstadt was nine years old at the height of the … Read more
These jaw-dropping aerial and internal shots show a top-secret Soviet ground-effect vehicle bigger than a jumbo jet lying abandoned on a beach where it will be converted into a museum. The futuristic-looking MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan was towed by tug across the Caspian Sea last month as part of a 14-hour journey from Kaspiysk naval base to Derbent, … Read more
Newly declassified CIA documents reveal that at the height of the Cold War, the United States planned to develop a fleet of bird-like drones in Area 51 that would be capable of spying on the Soviet Union. Code-named Project Aquiline, the nuclear-powered drones were designed to stay in flight for up to 30 days at … Read more