The Red Line: A Railway Journey Through The Cold War

By Christopher Knowles

The Red Line is the story of a train journey from London to Hong Kong. It is set in 1981, the year Christopher made the first of twenty-four such journeys as a tour guide, when the Cold War was still very much a fact of life. Although China appeared to be on the brink of significant change, no one could know for certain; Poland was stirring but the prospect of change in the USSR and its other allies seemed remote. This made a journey by train across that landscape particularly fascinating, because by using standard, scheduled services that together created one of the longest possible railway routes, one was necessarily immersed in the various countries in ways that otherwise would have been impossible. Equally fascinating were the reactions of Western travelers to finding themselves incarcerated for weeks on end in the eccentric world behind the Iron Curtain.

In order to give the journey some coherence, the most memorable events over those years have been condensed into a single journey and the most notable personalities, plucked from various times and places, have been thrown together. To emphasize the fact that these events took place in the recent past, and to be able to show how extraordinarily quickly the world has changed in the few intervening years, the story is told by a narrator. Everything that occurs is true, although some circumstances have been slightly adapted for the sake of fluency and names of individuals have been changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473887466

Christopher Knowles

Christopher Knowles is an author and creator of comics. He is known for Halo: An Angel's Story, a mini-series published by Sirius Entertainment. He was the editor of the Top Shelf Productions magazine Comic Book Artist from 2000-2004 and has written articles for publications like The Jack Kirby Collector and sites like Comic Book Resources. Knowles also wrote a highly acclaimed and award-winning book called Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes and the critically-acclaimed Clash City Showdown: The Music, Meaning and Legacy of the Clash. He also co-authored a book about "The X-Files" TV series called The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths, and the Movies, published by Insight EditionsHe was an associate editor and columnist for the five-time Eisner Award-winning Comic Book Artist magazine, as well as a writer and reviewer for the UK magazine, Classic Rock. Knowles wrote the definitive history of the cult classic film Lucifer Rising for Classic Rock, which featured exclusive interviews with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, director Kenneth Anger, and Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil. The Lucifer Rising cover story earned Classic Rock its best-selling issue to date. He keeps several blogs that discuss occult topics, including The Secret Sun, The Solar Satellite, and The Solar Seminar. He resides in Red Hook, New Jersey.