Yesterday we watched a cameo of the Cold War: Bridge of Spies.

Good. Suspenseful, but not action-hijacked. Thoughtful, but not dreary. Principled, but not sentimental.

As this review puts it: "Both Hanks and Rylance ... are masters at underplaying, which is just the right tone for their communions here. The decency of their interactions underscores the films central theme: Enemies are people, too, and some of them, like Abel, were just doing their job, in the same way that American spies were doing theirs."

I grew up during the Cold War. The Germany I knew was a divided country, and most of the people I talked to back then thought it would remain so. West Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie Museum was possibly my first political revelation: so "our" side did propaganda, too... I remember East Berlin for its large police presence, the limitations of its bookshops' travel sections (books on Outer Mongolia figured strongly), and -- in comparison with the blindingly bright West Berlin -- its drab greyness.

I did Russian lessons at Plaw Hatch Hall, Britain's "First Trade Union Country Club", with a fascinating cast of fellow-learners: a Greenham Common stalwart; two elderly experts in Old Church Slavonic; a young woman who'd visited the USSR several times, and "just wanted us all to be friends"; and a middle-aged guy with a Roller (for ownership of which he got teased pretty heavily, and there was a tacit understanding that when the bucket came round to collect funds for the striking Kent miners, he would put in a LARGE donation).



By the time I got to Russia, however, the Cold War had ended -- just. In 1993 people were still adjusting to the harsh economic realities that "freedom" not only didn't remove but possibly worsened. I remember old people crouched on the streets of Moscow, a few household goods for sale atop a sad little blanket. It was very clear that some people were doing very well out of the new system, but many people were not. Soviet memorabilia were selling like hot cakes. And there were some noisy but modest bands of protesters, campaigning for the return of communism.

We regularly see commentary on the new Cold War with Russia, or the impending Cold War with China. But the real Cold War had a very different feel.

And yet in Asia, it's not entirely over. Cambodia is still coming to terms with communists who became killers of ordinary people, and Indonesia is still coming to terms with ordinary people who became killers of communists and all those loosely connected with them. Four of the world's five remaining communist countries are in Asia. And only recently, of course, we visited the peninsula where the Cold War is still going strong. This is its iron curtain:





The day before Bridge of Spies, we'd watched the last of our North Korean movies. Entitled A Family Basketball Team, it was made in 1998, but looked older. I found the plot a bit complex, with people coming into the family, and people trying to get away, and granddad disappearing off and returning.

But the message came through loud and clear: good North Korean families play sport, preferably basketball; the family patriarch guides their endeavours, and is ultimately the source of all wisdom (the family is thus a microcosm of society); they have fun together, and learn to repent of their various sins; and being singled out for commendation by Leader Kim Jong-Il is an enormous -- enormous -- source of pride... All is good in the best of all possible worlds.

Of course, much of this seemed very familiar. In our factory and farm and school visits, just a couple of short months ago, we were told precisely how many times the various leaders had visited, and the highest accolade was to have that leader say he was satisfied...



And sport in general, including basketball, has not lost its importance, as we saw very clearly at the Sogdowon Children's Camp.



Let's hope it can be one of the ice-melters. And let's hope the humanity that inspired the characters in Bridge of Spies will be on hand until we reach that point.