INTERVIEW WITH TAYLOR DOWNING
Taylor is a historian, writer, broadcaster and author of 1983 – The World at the Brink. His latest book, 1942 – Britain at the Brink, on the military disasters and political crises of 1942, was published in January
As a regular NATO exercise, Able Archer was the supreme war game: to play out the processes of taking the US and NATO forces into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But 1983 was no ordinary year, with tension and mistrust between the two nuclear superpowers reaching dangerous levels. On the night of 9 November 1983, convinced Able Archer was cover to launch a real attack, Yuri Andropov, the ill and paranoid Soviet leader, placed his finger firmly on the nuclear button ready to push the whole planet into nuclear oblivion.
How different was the Cold War in 1983
