Cold War - (English Heritage) by Wayne D Cocroft & Roger C Thomas & P S Barnwell (Paperback)

About the Book

From 1947 the United States committed herself to the containment of communist expansion, through what became known as the Truman doctrine. From that date, until the early 1990s Britain and other Western powers became locked in a political game of bluff that became known as the Cold War. How fast memory fades ...

Book Synopsis

The historical and cultural aspects of the Cold War have been much studied, yet its physical manifestations in England - its buildings and structures - have remained largely unknown.

To the great landscape historian WG Hoskins writing in the 1950's they were profoundly alien: "England of the ... electric fence, of the high barbed wire around some unmentionable devilment.... Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men, and the politicians".

Now these survivors of the Cold War are, in their turn, disappearing fast, like medieval monasteries and bastioned forts before them - only with more limited scope for regeneration and reuse.

This book is the first to look at these monuments to the Cold War. It is heavily illustrated with photographs of the sites as they survive today, archive photographs (many previously unpublished), modern and historic air photographs, site and building plans, and specially commissioned interpretative drawings. It also endeavours look at the installations within the military and political context of what was one of the defining phenomena of the late 20th century.

Review Quotes

'a model example of comprehensive research in modern, contemporary industrial heritage'
ICON

"One could not imagine a better work on the subject"
Casemate

"This is excellent archaeology"
Antiquity

About the Author

Wayne D. Cocroft is an author and archaeologist at Historic England, Cambridge.