PLO

At the end of the 1970s, the Illustrated London News printed a special edition to commemorate the decade. What did it focus on? Music, from David Bowie to Bob Marley? Some of the best films Hollywood has ever produced, from The Godfather on? Political crises, such as Watergate and the end of the war in Vietnam? No, there was only one headline: ‘The 1970s: The Years of Terrorism.’ We forget – and perhaps we want to – quite how brutal and random that time could be, with plane hijackings, the Munich Olympics atrocity and bombs going off from the Tower of London to Washington to Singapore, where the Japanese Red

Cold War Prague hid its historic charms under a veil of grime and dilapidation. But, as we learn from this deeply researched and scholarly study, it was still a favoured destination for international terrorists, mostly Palestinians, after the 1968 Soviet invasion. They liked its hotels, its proximity to the West, its medical facilities, the tolerance and support of its security authorities and the quality of its light-arms manufacturing. Communist Czechoslovakia (CSSR) boasted relatively efficient security and intelligence services (generically referred to as the Stb). They were scrupulous record- keepers, and Stb archives, released after the Velvet Revolution with minimal expurgation, remain among the most complete of any former Warsaw Pact