Literature

MAX HASTINGS

Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Richard Hopton, Sherborne Literary Society

Sixty years ago, for thirteen days in October 1962, the world gazed horrified into the abyss of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest humanity came to thermonuclear catastrophe during the five decades of the Cold War. Sir Max Hastings’s new book, Abyss, tells the gripping story of how the world side-stepped disaster, but also of how close it came and how easily events might have provoked a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

It is appropriate, therefore, that Sir Max will be talking to the Sherborne Literary Society about Abyss on 25th October, sixty years to the day since one of the most dramatic events of the crisis. Much of what we now know about the events of those perilous days was at the time hidden from the public eye. The prolonged, agonised discussions in the White House between President Kennedy and his advisors, military and civilian, let alone the proceedings of the Russian Politburo, were entirely unknown to the wider world. The drama was largely a hidden one, conducted secretly in the corridors of power.

One exception to this was the stopping at sea on 25th October 1962 of the Russian tanker Bucharest. The presence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba - a mere ninety miles from the coast of Florida - had been revealed on 15th October by aerial photographs taken from a U-2 surveillance aircraft. After five days of intense debate in the White House, on 20th October Kennedy imposed a blockade on Russian shipping bound for Cuba; the exclusion zone extended for 500 miles into the Atlantic to the east of the island. The blockade came into effect on 24th October.

The following morning, as the Bucharest approached the blockade line, she was intercepted by US warships. Until this moment, the crisis had unfolded behind closed doors in Washington and Moscow but this encounter in the Atlantic was reported on live network TV: as Hastings says, ‘Millions of people held their breath’ as the presenter counted down the miles as the Bucharest steamed towards the exclusion line. In the event, it was an anti-climax as the vessel when challenged declared that she was carrying petroleum products which were not covered by the blockade so she was allowed to pass. But the world had seen the confrontation between the two superpowers in action. This was the threat of war made real.

The deployment of Russian missiles in Cuba - codenamed ‘Operation Anadyr’ - began in the summer of 1962. Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet government, had mixed, not to say confused, motives for deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba, so close to the United States. On the one hand, he wanted to defend Fidel Castro’s communist revolution - threatened the previous year by the Americans’ farcical attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs - while on the other wishing to project Soviet power into the western hemisphere. As Khrushchev memorably asked his defence minister while considering the deployment, ‘What if we throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants?’ The missile deployment was ‘pure adventurism’. His mistake was to imagine that the missiles could be hidden from the Americans and that, once discovered, they would not take the greatest exception to their presence.

In 1962 the Cold War was at its height; the two nuclear superpowers glowered at each other across the continent of Europe but stood toe-to-toe in the divided city of Berlin. Here it was that tensions between the two blocs were most strained: the previous summer, the Russians had begun constructing a barrier to stop eastern Germans leaving the communist utopia in droves. In 1948-49, Stain had cut the city off from the west altogether, forcing the Allies to supply it by air for nearly a year.

The United States in the early 1960s was ‘by far the richest and most powerful nation on earth’ but most Americans regarded the Soviet Union as a ‘force of cosmic evil’. Fear of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war occupied a place in the public imagination which is hard to recreate today. Kennedy knew that once Russian missiles had been discovered in Cuba, his administration would have to be seen to take action to nullify the threat.

In dealing with the crisis, Kennedy had to balance the demands of the American military for immediate, devastating and provocative action against the advice of those diplomats who favoured negotiation. The US military top brass, having cut their teeth during the Second World War, were particularly bellicose; one of them said, ‘The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left, we win.’

In the end, after thirteen days of excruciating tension, Khrushchev backed down, agreeing to withdraw the Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for an American undertaking to leave Castro’s regime unmolested. Nuclear war had been avoided; the world could breathe once more.

President Kennedy’s leadership of the United States during the crisis was, writes Hastings, ‘his finest and most courageous achievement’. In fact, as we now know, Khrushchev never wanted a war: he was all too aware of the overwhelming superiority of America’s nuclear arsenal. In 1962 America had around 5,000 nuclear warheads against the Soviet Union’s 300. Neither leader wanted a war but there remained a real possibility that one might have started by default as a result of the actions of a lowly commander on either side taking a split-second decision in the heat of the moment. Thankfully it never happened.

sherborneliterarysociety.com

___________________________ Tuesday 25th October 7pm Max Hastings on Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis The Powell Theatre, Abbey Road, Sherborne. Tickets £9-£10 from sherborneliterarysociety.com/events

EXTRACT ROOTED: STORIES OF LIFE, LAND AND A FARMING REVOLUTION

by Sarah Langford

This story happened by accident. I never expected, or wanted, to live a life on the land. But then fate took me there and taught me lessons I never knew I needed to learn.

Some people tell me that having farming in my family means it must be in my blood. Maybe they are right. Rooted is, in part, my journey to find out. First, I had to decide what being a farmer meant. To do that I had to find out what being a farmer used to mean, what it now means and what it will mean in the future. In doing so, I met others asking themselves the same questions.

This book weaves their stories around mine. Some of those farmers are still discovering the answers. Others found them long ago. Like many of the farmers I met, to find my future I had to go back to my past. So that story – the story of my grandparents’ farm – is the first that you will read.

As I made this journey, I came across a revolution: a way of farming that is both new and also very old, and which asks us to look at our history, our future and our

Image: Jason Kirker

values differently. It is a revolution that might just abate a climate crisis, a physical and mental health crisis, and a biodiversity crisis too. It could help to regenerate our land while also giving us some of the answers so many city dwellers seem to be looking for, not just about connection but about how to live. In doing so, it can teach us a different way of being.

I found myself in this world at the beginning of one of the greatest upheavals in farming for generations. Brexit has separated the United Kingdom from Europe, and so too from the Common Agricultural Payments that have supported food production for so long. Now these public subsidies are being withdrawn. One-third of all UK farms make a loss without them. Farmers will now be granted public money for looking after land that many accuse them of wrecking, and not for growing the food they define themselves by. Food is no longer seen as a public good, but as a public given. This shift in mission is both huge and difficult, because farming is more than just a job. It is an identity. Everything about it must be seen through this prism. It is not just how farmers spend their days that is changing. It is who they are.

This journey has taken me around the country speaking to farmers from every walk of life who are farming in many different ways, on varying soils and on land with diverse histories. They have trusted me with their diaries, old correspondence, home movies and photographs. They have confided moments of pain and joy. More than one has cried at the relief of unburdening themselves. I have learned a lot from every one of them.

"Food is no longer seen as a public good, but as a public given"

Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution by Sarah Langford (Viking). Available now at £16.99 (hardcover). Sherborne Times reader offer price of £14.99 from Winstone’s Books

___________________________________________ Wednesday 5th October 7pm Sarah Langford – Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution Winstone’s Books, 8 Cheap Street, Sherborne. Sarah will be talking about her new book and an emotional rewilding of 200 acres of Suffolk Farmland. Tickets £3, available online at shop.winstonebooks.co.uk, in-store, by phone on 01935 816128 or email winstonebooks1@gmail.com