Armageddon

• The Real War by Richard Nixon
  Sidgwick, 341 pp, £8.95, April 1980, ISBN 0 283 98650 6

Not since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 have people in the West been so fearful of the possibility of nuclear war. Ironically enough, this is at a time when the chances of a massive nuclear exchange have diminished. But when housewives in East Anglia inquire about bomb shelters, or when Frenchmen tick ‘Surrender’ in an opinion poll about the best response to a strategic threat, they are displaying the same sense of ever-increasing vulnerability and loss of control that now seems to mark many Western leaders.