Robert Beeston

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 more senior guards would be summoned in an agonising ritual that left Western visitors in little doubt they were entering hostile territory. Our apartment was bugged. We were followed. Russians were not allowed to visit our flat without permission. Those who challenged the regime — the tiny group of courageous dissidents — were inevitably broken by the system.

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 altered. America remained the ‘Great Satan’ and Britain, Iran’s traditional foe, still merited the title ‘little Satan’. But a chance encounter with one of the participants in this supposedly spontaneous, but evidently well-rehearsed, demonstration revealed a very different side to the country. ‘You are from England?’ he said, beaming. ‘You are welcome. My cousin lives in Manchester.