Having been brought up in the 1950s and 60s during what was known as the Cold War, I find it a bit sad that after all the ensuing decades nothing seems to have changed. Russia and the West are at it again, still calling one another names. But as long as it remains name-calling we'll take that.
As a child I recall grainy newsreels of mighty May Day parades on Red Square, with the politburo waving to all those soldiers, tanks and a seemingly never-ending procession of fearsome-looking missiles. Things seemed a lot simpler in those days to us schoolboys. There was the enormous red empire of the Soviet Union (USSR) who were the bad guys. Then there was the West, the good guys. Quite straightforward really. In the USSR everyone ate borscht and military choirs sang boating songs. In the West it was burgers, the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
One of my earliest memories was a newsreel of Khrushchev visiting Oxford in 1956 during a trip to England. I recall asking my father why the university students were singing "Poor old Joe" and he explained that it was a reference to former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who Khrushchev had denounced earlier that year. My next lasting image is of that bizarre 1960 UN General Assembly session in which a furious Khrushchev waved his fists and banged his shoe in anger. Now that was fun.
Then in October 1962 was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which definitely wasn't fun. I was a teenager and like most British people knew little about Cuba apart from it producing cigars that no one in Britain could afford.
The 'Olympian'
Cigars were to play an important role in the CIA's many attempts to "terminate" Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who was said to have survived hundreds of attempts on his life. The most famous was the exploding cigar which turned out to be a dud as were efforts to poison his favourite cigar. More imaginative perhaps was the booby-trapped conch shell prepared for one of Castro's scuba-diving expeditions. That didn't work either.
It prompted Castro to comment: "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic sport, I would win the gold medal."
I spy
One positive outcome of the Cold War was that in its early days it sparked dozens of excellent spy novels from the likes of Graham Greene, Len Deighton and John le Carre. These in turn led to many movies which kept Michael Caine in business for a while, portraying English spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966).
Other Cold War thrillers that found me sneaking off to the local Odeon in the Sixties were The Manchurian Candidate (1962) with Laurence Harvey and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) starring Richard Burton. Later came the terrific television series of le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People with Alec Guinness in top form.
The Putin factor
It might seem a paradox but some of the biggest fans of Caine's spy films were the Soviet security agency, the KGB. Caine said he was surprised to learn that an admirer of the Harry Palmer series was a certain Vladimir Putin. The actor told the Daily Express that a friend of his met Mr Putin when he was head of the KGB. Mr Putin reportedly said: "Tell Mr Caine we used to watch those movies and laugh because he was such a clever spy."
Caine was proud of his Palmer character, seeing him as a much more realistic spy than James Bond although Sean Connery's 007 performed better at the box office. Caine believed Bond "was so obvious he couldn't possibly be a spy as he drew so much attention to himself. My spy is the ordinary guy doing his own shopping in the supermarket".
Red Square in the rain
Fifteen years after the Cuban crisis I found myself standing in a very wet Red Square. It was June 1977 and I was on my way to England from Bangkok and decided to make the most of an Aeroflot stopover in Moscow. The fact that the Russian airline offered the cheapest fares of course had no influence on my decision.
Leonid Brezhnev was at the helm but the Cold War was still very chilly. I admit to getting a bit of a buzz standing in that famous square soaking up the history. Despite a steady drizzle, a bridal couple lined up for photographs with the magnificent backdrop of St Basil's Cathedral and its minarets. Alas, I didn't bump into any of those slinky female secret agents that pursued Bond in From Russia with Love.
Beatles diplomacy
While in Moscow I couldn't get out of my head the Beatles tongue-in-cheek "Back in the USSR", which Paul McCartney wrote concerning a Soviet spy returning home after an extended mission in the US and that includes the lyrics "the Ukraine girls really knock me out". Beatles music was banned in the Soviet Union at that time. But in 2003 McCartney was to perform that very song at a concert in Red Square attended by one Vladimir Putin, who told Paul he loved Beatles music. Funny old world isn't it?
Perhaps if Joe Biden and Mr Putin spent an evening together watching ancient Caine spy films and listening to the Beatles things might calm down a bit.
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