All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the EveningThirty-five years ago, John Miller gave a talk to the Great Britain - USSR Association about his experiences in the Soviet Union as a foreign correspondent. His book All Them Cornfields and Ballet in the Evening is the story of some of the people and places he visited over some 50 years of involvement with the USSR - now a vanished world. The title is unashamedly stolen from the film I'm Alright Jack, which appeared in 1957. Fred Kite (played by Peter Sellers) is a communist trade-union leader, who is forever acclaiming the Soviet Union as a workers' paradise. Asked if he had been to Russia, Kite/Sellers says wistfully that he hadn't, but he often wanted to because of 'all them cornfields and ballet in the evening'. |
Contents
Nikitas Knickers | 3 |
Cockroach Whiskers Croaks | 19 |
Floppy and Co | 35 |
The Flight That Never Was | 45 |
Death Of The Dastardly Duo | 53 |
Khrushchevs Raspberries | 67 |
Two Men Named Boris and a Yuri | 79 |
Comrade Blue Pencil | 89 |
The Great Leveller | 169 |
The Desperate Daft and Dissident | 185 |
Moscow Nights and Days | 197 |
Houses of Illrepute | 215 |
The Gruesome Twosome | 227 |
Margaret and Harold and Denis and George | 239 |
Sex and the Married KCMG | 257 |
Saying No with Bare Hands | 267 |
Common terms and phrases
aircraft ambassador anti-Soviet asked became Bolshoi Boris bottle Brezhnev British Embassy bugs Burgess cockroaches coffin cold Cold War collapse of Communism Communist Party comrades coup course dacha Daily Telegraph dead death died diplomats dissidents door drinking drunk film flat Foreign Ministry friends funeral Glavlit going Gorbachev GULAG hand happened heard huge John Miller journalists Kim Philby knew Kremlin labour camp lady later leader Lenin living London looked Lubyanka Maclean Mausoleum Mikhail Gorbachev military millions Moscow nasty never newspaper night Nikita Khrushchev Novodevichy once Penkovsky Peredelkino Philby photographs police political Pravda queue Red Army Red Square Reuters Russian Sakharov Saransk secret shouted Solzhenitsyn Soviet Foreign Soviet Union Stalin story Street suddenly talk Telegraph telephone tell thing thought told took trouble turned USSR vodka walk wanted West Western wife word young