Timothy Phillips

Historian and writer Timothy Phillips looks at the history of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall and finds that they continue to shape our world today.

Phillips says that while the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall transformed Europe, we cannot consign the tensions and the restrictions of the past to history. With Russia making war and divisions elsewhere in Europe on the rise, these old fault lines have new resonance. He visits a nudist beach on the last few metres of the West German side of the Iron Curtain, finds a despotic regime in Azerbaijan, and talks to people across Europe affected by the old divides.

‘A brilliant book . . . written with a keen eye . . . Full of surprises’ William Hague

Phillips has written and spoken widely on British and Russian history. He is author of The Secret Twenties and Beslan: The Tragedy of School No 1.