The project will focus on those who went on with their everyday lives in the shadow of Cold War defences.

BBC: Cold War study looks at communities in Norfolk and Suffolk

But the shadow of the Cold War still falls across the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

BBC: A summit of limited expectations

Prior to filming The Awakening, Hall read Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That, The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War by Juliet Nicholson and "a lot of war poetry".

BBC: Rebecca Hall turns ghost buster in The Awakening

The picture has a stately, waltz-like rhythm, as the narrator (Marcello Mazzarella, a dead ringer for the real Proust) guides us through the declining fortunes of his friends under the shadow of the First World War.

NEWYORKER: Time Regained

The prospect of a war with Iraq is also casting a shadow over the economic outlook.

ECONOMIST: Ports in a storm | The

But shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said the appointment followed a "turf war" within the coalition government.

BBC: Cable defends Ebdon appointment

Once a potent symbol of American frustration with the Vietnam War, the prison is now a tourist attraction, in the shadow of an upscale high-rise building owned by a Singapore businessman.

CNN: 'Hanoi Hilton' now holds only painful memories

"We all live in Mr Punch's shadow and what a strange shadow it is, " laughs Mervyn Millar, UK director of Handspring - the puppet company behind War Horse, which is soon to unveil a new show Crow based on the poems of Ted Hughes.

BBC: Mr Punch celebrates 350 years of puppet anarchy