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Only to be intensely berated by an officer of the people's police, quite senior he must have been, I think.

And he was saying basically, you know, who do you think you are? Look at that hair, you know,

I'd like to get you into the Foxpolity and then you'd find out about hair, you know.

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Our interview today is with Frederick Taylor, who is the author of one of my favourite books on the Berlin Wall.

Using official history, archive research and personal stories, he has produced one of the definitive books on the Berlin Wall.

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Just head over to coldwarconversations.com slash donate. So back to today's episode, James is on again and he speaks with Frederick Taylor, who provides some great accounts of his personal experiences in Berlin, as well as the story of the Berlin Wall and its eventual destruction.

We welcome Frederick Taylor to our Cold War conversation.

Now, you've written much on Germany, and I've wondered your experiences of Germany.

How did you come to be so interested in this country?

Well, it's one of those curious things.

My mother grew up in South America, so I spoke Spanish.

My father, though, who was a South London

working class boy, had learned languages during the war. And so I grew up in a council house,

but with parents who spoke foreign languages, which was quite unusual. So it didn't seem odd to me

that with both French and German, when I went to the local grammar school in Aylesbury,

Buckinghamshire where I grew up,

that I would take on languages.

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