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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnumann.

And me, William Durumple.

And again, we are delighted to be joined by Alex von Tunselman, author of Blood and Sand. It is a marvellous book, and we left you on quite the cliffhanger. I mean, I think it's one of the best cliffhangers we've ever done. World War III is about to erupt. I mean, it's a biggie. I mean, it is a biggie. And I think people these days do not realise they talk about, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis or they talk about the times we're living in today.

But this was properly on the brink.

And just to remind us why, were you looking at two different arenas of action, which both

seem to be going to hell in a handcart simultaneously. That's absolutely right.

So what you had is Britain and France colluding with Israel to start a war in the Middle East,

specifically for Israel to stage an invasion of Egypt that would allow Britain and France to intervene

ostensibly to protect the Suez Canal,

but actually really to take over and topple Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt.

Simultaneously and unrelated, and yet in the minds of many very powerful people surely had to be related,

there was the first major uprising in the Soviet satellite states

against Soviet control. And that happened in Hungary. And it was a popular uprising, centered

around Budapest, but actually sort of nationwide, completely spontaneous. And yet happening

so much in the same days that you had Nikita Krushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, and indeed,

over in the US, many people in Washington thinking, surely there must be some sort of plan going on

here on the other side, and these things must be linked. So what was extraordinary from that

episode, and I think it bears repeating before we sort of dive into the nitty-gritty of all of

this, is two things are apparent.

...