For almost three decades, the Cold War was focused on Berlin, where the two (nuclear-armed) sides were kept apart by a twelve-foot wall, which had appeared almost overnight in August 1961. For a generation, until its fall in November 1989, it not only divided the city of Berlin, but also symbolised the confrontation between capitalist West and socialist East.

In this astonishing book, journalist Christopher Hilton has collected together the individual stories of those whose lives it affected, including international politicians, American and British soldiers, East German border guards and, most importantly, the citizens of Berlin itself, West and East. Weaving their memories together into a remarkable narrative, this is the extraordinarily vivid, occasionally harrowing and often touching story of a city divided, and of how it affected the lives of real people.