Every Club in the Bag 
R.W. Johnson
- The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War by Peter Hennessy
- Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World by Percy Cradock
Every book about the Cold War and the nuclear threat that dominated it should probably begin with a chapter about what would have been the biggest invasion in human history, dwarfing even the Normandy landings. In this case, D-Day was to be 1 November 1945. An American army of five million men was to be assembled for the invasion of Japan, with smaller but still significant contingents from Britain, Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth. Despite an unprecedented advance bombardment from sea and air, which would have annihilated the Imperial Navy and Air Force, and despite the help the Red Army could provide by driving simultaneously south to Port Arthur, the casualties on the beaches of Kyushu and Honshu alone were expected to be staggering: advance estimates numbered tens of thousands dead on the first day.
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R.W. Johnson, an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, lives in Cape Town, where he is completing a book on South Africa since the advent of democracy.
Other articles by this contributor:
Mr Shepperd to you · Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51 by Ross McKibbin
Rogue’s Paradise · The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War by Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova
Where do we go from here? · Zimbabwe
Burning Blankets · Robert Mugabe’s latest tidy-up
Her Boy · Mark Thatcher
Nerds, Rabbits and a General Lack of Testosterone · Major and Lamont
How Mugabe came to power · R.W. Johnson talks to Wilfred Mhanda
Cads · Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War Two Espionage by Joseph Persico.
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