Jim Brown played an important role in the Cold War through a long career with Radio Free Europe (RFE), ending as Director from 1978 to 1984, when he resigned because of disagreements with the Reagan administration.

Where are you now and what can you see?

In my study, looking out at a very sodden garden. It is, however, brightened up by a winter-flowering cherry, which has suddenly broken out into intense white blossom.

Intellectual and visionary, liberal and anti-Communist, George Miller inspired a generation of Conservative activists in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union seemed impregnable. His operations were so extensive that few of his associates knew the full picture.

Pierre Harmel, who died on 15 November aged 98, was a former Belgian foreign minister who authored a 1967 strategy that led the Nato allies to seek detente with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

North Korea has invited the US envoy overseeing ties with the prickly state to visit for nuclear talks next month, as Washington pushes sanctions against Pyongyang.

Marcus is a young man who loves his hard-working father – he just can't live in the same house as him. He's a straight-A student who can't get on with his room-mates at college, so he keeps asking to be moved. He's the object of beautiful Olivia's attention, but doesn't know how to respond to a young woman who's more sexually experienced than he is.

A Strategic Defence Review is essential in the current situation of military commitments abroad at a time of economic downturn. Hard choices must be made for the present and the future. The question is whether this review will be able to rise above the lobbying of all the vested interests, and also whether a future Tory government would adhere to the recommendations.