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The Cold Dark Night
''The Cold Dark Night'' is a 1957 spy thriller novel by the British writer Sarah Gainham. Her second novel, it is set at the height of the Cold War when the 1954 Berlin Conference saw the Big Four foreign ministers arrive in the divided city.Burton p.71 Gainham had worked in Berlin as a journalist at the time of the Conference. Synopsis Joe Purdey, an American journalist in Berlin to cover the conference encounters Gisela Schill, an refugee from East Germany whose husband has gone missing while working for British intelligence behind the Iron Curtain. He is drawn into the world of subterfuge and low-level spying taking place in the city. The novel concludes with a face-off between British and Soviet forces at the Anhalter Bahnhof The Anhalter Bahnhof is a former railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, approximately southeast of Potsdamer Platz. Once one of Berlin's most important railway stations, it was severely damaged in World War II, and finally closed for traffic in 19 ..., ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sarah Gainham
Rachel Ames, née Stainer (London, 1 October 1915 – Petronell, Austria, 24 November 1999) was a British novelist and journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Sarah Gainham. She is perhaps best known for her 1967 novel ''Night Falls on the City'', the first of a trilogy about life in Vienna under Nazi rule. Life Rachel Stainer was born in Islington. After her father Tom died in World War I, the family moved to Newbury, Berkshire. After an "impulsive and unsuccessful wartime liaison", in 1947 she moved to Vienna to work with the Four Power Commission, and married the journalist Antony Terry. Terry was German correspondent for the ''Sunday Times'', and the marriage "fell victim to his workload". Stainer never returned to England, living in Berlin, Bonn and Trieste before returning to Vienna. In 1956 Cyril Ray helped secure her a job as Central and Eastern Europe Correspondent for ''The Spectator'', making a plea that she needed the money. Writing as Sarah Gainham (the name of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Barker Limited
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson founded Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1949 with a reception at Brown's Hotel, London. Among many other significant books, it published Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita'' (1959) and Nicolson's ''Portrait of a Marriage'' (1973), a frank biography of his mother Vita Sackville-West and father Harold Nicolson. In its early years Weidenfeld also published nonfiction works by Isaiah Berlin, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Rose Macaulay, and novels by Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow. Later it published titles by world leaders and historians, along with contemporary fiction and glossy illustrated books. Weidenfeld & Nicolson acquired the publisher Arthur Baker Ltd in 1959, and ran it as an imprint into the 1990s. Weidenfeld was one of Orion's first a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spy Novel
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure (''The Prisoner of Zenda'', 1894, ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'', 1905), the thriller (such as the works of Edgar Wallace) and the politico-military thriller (''The Schirmer Inheritance'', 1953, ''The Quiet American'', 1955). History Commentator William Bendler noted that "Chapter 2 of the Hebre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thriller Novel
Thriller is a genre of fiction, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Thrillers generally keep the audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. The most common genres that overlap with the thriller genre include crime, horror and detective fiction. Characteristics Writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his lectures at Cornell University, said: In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars. The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from the nuclear arsenal development and conventional military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. The Western Bloc was led by the United States as well as a number of other First W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berlin Conference (1954)
The Berlin Conference of 1954 was a meeting of the " Big Four" foreign ministers of the United States (John Foster Dulles), Britain (Anthony Eden Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 until his resignation in 1957. Achieving rapid promo ...), France (Georges Bidault), and the Soviet Union (Vyacheslav Molotov) from 25 January to 18 February 1954. The ministers agreed to call a wider international conference to discuss a settlement to the recent Korean War and the ongoing First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh, but it failed to reach agreement on issues of European security and the international status of Germany and Austria, then under four-power occupation after World War II. The meeting was an early fruit of the first period of US-Soviet ''détente'' or "thaw" during the Cold War. Little progress was made exce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Four Conference
The term Big Four Conference may refer to one of several conferences between heads of state or foreign ministers of the victorious nations after World War I (1914–18) or during and after World War II (1939–45). Post-World War I After World War I the term "big four" referred to France, Britain, the United States and Italy. The heads of state of these countries met at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Paris Peace Conference in January 1919. The Big Four were also known as the Council of Four. They were Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, and Georges Clemenceau of France. World War II During World War II the term "Four Policemen, Big Four" referred to the alliance of the US, UK, USSR and China. At the Moscow Conference (1943), Second Moscow Conference in October 1943, Chinese Ambassador in Moscow Fu Bingchang, Foo Ping-sheung joined foreign ministers Anthony Eden (UK), Cordell Hull (US) and Vyacheslav Molotov ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state was a part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state".Patrick Major, Jonathan Osmond, ''The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht 1945–71'', Manchester University Press, 2002, Its territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces following the end of World War II—the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it and West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR. Most scholars and academics describe the GDR as a totalitarian dictatorship. The GDR was establish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West, its allies and neutral states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were NATO members, or connected to or influenced by the United States; or nominally neutral. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain. It later became a term for the physical barrier of fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers that divided the "east" and "west". The Berlin Wall was also part of this physical barrier. The nations to the east of the Iron Curtain were Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anhalter Bahnhof
The Anhalter Bahnhof is a former railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, approximately southeast of Potsdamer Platz. Once one of Berlin's most important railway stations, it was severely damaged in World War II, and finally closed for traffic in 1952, when the GDR-owned ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' rerouted all railway traffic between Berlin and places in the GDR avoiding the West Berlin area. The station's name lives on in the Berlin S-Bahn station of the same name, opened in October 1939 as part of the ''North-South S-Bahn link''. Construction Work to build the Anhalter Bahnhof began on 15 April 1839. As the Berlin terminus, of what become known as the Anhalt Railway, it opened on 1 July 1841 as far as Jüterbog (the inaugural train being hauled by the very first Borsig locomotive), and extended to Dessau, Köthen and beyond at later dates. It became known as the "Anhalt line" because it ran through the historical state of Anhalt, which in turn gave the new Berlin terminus its na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1957 British Novels
1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1950s decade. Events January * January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. * January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. * January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be dismissed for having ''handled the ball'', in Test cricket. * January 9 – British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns. * January 10 – Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * January 11 – The African Convention is founded in Dakar. * January 14 – Kripalu Maharaj is named fifth Jagadguru (world teacher), after giving seven days of speeches before 500 Hindu scholars. * January 15 – The film '' Throne of Blood'', Akira Kurosawa's reworking of ''Macbeth'', is r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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