The meeting in Moscow was kept secret. The Soviet leadership had agreed to a low key exchange of views with one of the private policy advisers of the UK’s then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

In 1981, George R. Urban, my father, had been invited to join ‘Thatcher’s private band’ (as The Times put it) to give her direct access to his expertise in communism in all its manifestations; and how best to manage communist regimes.