Robert Beeston

The great thaw

We had a running joke in my family that entering the Soviet Union was a bit like smuggling in somebody else’s nose. Every school holiday, as I presented my passport to the granite-faced Soviet border guard at Moscow’s Sheremetevo Airport, my photograph would be scrutinised at length to make sure it matched my face. Sometimes

The double life of a people

Listing page content here The crowd of bearded men looked and sounded as though they meant it, punching the air in unison and chanting the familiar slogans: ‘Death to America!’, ‘Death to Israel!’. A quarter of a century after the revolution that swept the Islamic regime to power the official message in Tehran had barely