Cold War: Building for nuclear confrontation 1946-1989 by Wayne Cocroft and Roger Thomas, English Heritage, £24.99, ISBN 1873592698 Reviewed by Mike Holderness
NOT so long ago, you could navigate the small islands that make up the UK almost entirely by “official secrets”. Installations for detecting and responding to nuclear attack provided landmarks everywhere: here a radio mast, over there a weapons store nestled in a fold of the landscape, or a bunker under yonder where regional bureaucrats would skulk if the worst happened.
Now, much of this macabre machinery is “heritage”. Whether or not you believed that preparing for Armageddon…
