My childhood Cold War fears are back

On the day before my seventh birthday, which I spent at my grandma’s in Yorkshire, a young man named Raymond Jones walked into North End Music Stores in Liverpool and asked the guy behind the counter for a record on which an obscure local group called the Beatles provided the backing track for a song titled ‘My Bonnie’. The guy behind the counter was the shop’s manager and the son of its owner. His name was Brian Epstein, and as a restless budding entrepreneur he felt he should be alert to what was going on around him. Because of young Raymond’s evident enthusiasm, Brian made a note on a piece of paper saying: ‘The Beatles? Check on Monday.’ Which he did. Intrigued by what he saw, he wondered if he should become their manager.

Forty-eight hours after Raymond’s purchase, on the day after my seventh birthday, while I was still in Yorkshire, the Soviet Union tested a thermonuclear device that proved to be the most powerful ever created.