An Evening with Charlie English
'Entertaining and vivid… This is a gripping account of an intriguing and little-known Cold War moment' OBSERVER
The astonishing story of the ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
Join Charlie English as he explores this true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. As well as his detailed research and the books that made it through The Iron Curtain.
Hosted by our lead bookseller, Darren, The CIA Bookclub will be an enthralling evening for all fans of non-fiction.
About The CIA Book Club
For almost five decades after the Second World War, Europe was divided by the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. The Iron Curtain, a near-impenetrable barrier of wire and wall, tank traps, minefields, watchtowers and men with dogs, stretched for 4,300 miles from the Arctic to the Black Sea. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects.
No one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’, which aimed to win the Cold War with literature.
From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s global CIA ‘book club’ would infiltrate millions of banned titles into the Eastern Bloc, written by a vast and eclectic list of authors, including Hannah Arendt and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Agatha Christie.
This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.
About Charlie English
Charlie English is the former head of international news at the Guardian. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he is the author of several widely acclaimed histories including The Snow Tourist, The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu and The Gallery of Miracles and Madness. He lives in London.