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. 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 psycho-logical 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.