A West German government bunker, a Dutch atomic bomb shelter and an abandoned Ukrainian submarine base. Click to enlarge.

From Relics of the Cold War by Martin Roemers.

By the mid-1970s, Britain was widely regarded – choose your favourite cliché – as the Sick Man of Europe, an economic basket case, ungovernable… In [1978] the year before Thatcher came to power, Britain, upon whose empire the sun never set, endured the Winter of Discontent. Labour unrest shut down public services, paralysing the nation for months on end… Rubbish was piled high on the streets of Britain that winter, and so, at one point, were human corpses. The Soviet trade minister told his British counterpart, “We don’t want to increase our trade with you. Your goods are unreliable, you’re always on strike, you never deliver.” This was what had become of the world’s greatest trading power.

From Claire Berlinski’s “There Is No Alternative”: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, which I’m halfway through reading and enjoying quite a lot. It’s a brisk and witty reminder of what was at stake and how socialism can lead to extraordinary selfishness. It also has plenty of revealing incidental nuggets, as when Berlinski notes the feelings of some of Thatcher’s loftier enemies:

When asked why intellectuals loathed her so, the theatre producer Jonathan Miller replied that it was “self-evident” – they were nauseated by her “odious suburban gentility.” The philosopher Mary Warnock deplored Thatcher’s “neat, well-groomed clothes and hair, packaged together in a way that’s not exactly vulgar, just low,” embodying “the worst of the lower-middle class.” This filled Warnock with “a kind of rage.”

Claire Berlinksi is interviewed by National Review’s Peter Robinson, again in 5 parts:

1. Socialist winter.

2. How she did it.

3. Thatcher and Obama.

4. Turkey and Islam.

5. What’s a radical?

Glenn Reynolds also interviews Berlinksi here. (Registration required.)

Related: Tory! Tory! Tory! An excellent 2006 miniseries tracing the history and context of Thatcherism, the miseries it involved and the much greater miseries it avoided. Well worth viewing in full. The three episodes are embedded below in six parts: 

The emergency bra. A bra for emergencies. // How memory cards are tested. // Python digesting rat (interior view). // Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. // There’s a vortex on Venus. // Victorian submarines. // Bollywood + robots. // Puny human musicians, make way for GuitarBot. // Diamond-studded hoods, custom made for your falcon. // And girls should have costumes too. // The Foyn Johanson house. // Private jet interiors. // Chocolate artisans. // Maintaining high standards in Italian sculpture. // Logan’s Run in Lego. // “Yes, we call it the death ray.” (h/t, Stephen Keating) // And a little project for the family: Space Balloon.

“Sensitivity” is letting other people’s reactions to you decide your behaviour. So instead of choosing to do what you think is right and then defending it, you say something or try out something or listen to other people demand something… and try to adapt to that.

Peter Robinson talks with Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield about grade inflation, illiberal “liberals” and the state of academia. In five parts:

1. Leaning left.

2. A culture of self-criticism.

3. Everyone is excellent.

4. Diversity in all things (except of course in thought).

5. “Sensitivity,” indignation and the right to be agreed with.

At last, the bacon-scented tuxedo. (h/t, Mr Eugenides) // It’s probably best not to dunk your hand into liquid nitrogen. // Or into the beam of the Large Hadron Collider. // Beer crate architecture. // Sculpture by Alma Allen. // Rocks and fog. // For hardcore vinyl lovers. // Wine vending machines. // Things organised neatly. // Spray-on clothing. // The iPad Orchestra. // Projection mapping in Russia. // Persian portraits. // The price of weed. // Astroturfing malfunction. // A short history of asteroid discovery. // Hungover owls. // Happy owl. // H.G. Wells meets Orson Welles. (1940) // The grilled cheese underground.