Index Catalog // NMS Research Repository

Still image

Nuclear weapon effects computer probably made in UK, 1960s

2021

Blog post

Forewarned is forearmed: inside the hidden world of the Royal Observer Corps

The Royal Observer Corps were a group of appointed civilians who manned bunkers across the country during the Cold War in case of nuclear attack. Luckily this never came to pass, and on the 30th anniversary of their stand down, Sarah Harper looks back at their important work.

Harper, Sarah

Lecture

The Vulcan’s Roar: the afterlife of a Cold War Object

Alberti, S J M M

2022

Journal article

Holidaying behind the Iron Curtain: The material culture of tourism in Cold War Eastern Europe

During the Twentieth Century, foreign travel underwent a process of democratisation. Increasingly, through the development of package holidays to ever more far-flung destinations, leisure tourism for the first time allowed ordinary people to experience different cultures first hand. With the increased availability and affordability of foreign travel, actively promoted by...

Wilkins, Carys

Cold War, Scotland, Eastern Europe, Friendship Society, and Souvenir

2022

Blog post

Breaking the Ice: When Hugh MacDiarmid met Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In October 1962, the world stood on the edge of an abyss as the United States and the Soviet Union prepared for nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Five months earlier, the charismatic Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko broke the political pack ice of the Cold War...

Gledhill, Jim

Russia , Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Hugh MacDiarmid , Poets , Poetry , Cold War , and USSR

Book chapter

13-inch lunar globe, by Räth, East German, c. 1961 Wh.6098 13.5-inch lunar globe, by Lipsky, Russian, 1967 Wh.6683

The forty-year global conflict known as the Cold War had many fronts. Some of them, like proxy wars in Asia and Africa, were hot; others, like the Berlin Wall or the northern North Sea, were indeed cold; but colder still were the battle lines drawn up in space. Famously, the...

Alberti, S J M M

2022

Blog post

Viewing museum objects through a Cold War Lens – eye-opening possibilities

In museums, Cold War history is often hidden in plain sight. Objects are silently relevant. Timelines skip across well-known dates of the postwar period. Maps steer visitors’ eyes towards ‘hotspots’. Thematic exhibitions shake up narrative. Omission is the natural by-product of curatorial focus. Coupled with the false but detrimental view...

Douthwaite, Jessica

Scotland's Material Heritage

2022

Doctoral thesis

Bombers, bunkers, and badges: The Cold War materialised in National Museums Scotland

How does an object become a Cold War object? Through its military installations, defence industry as well as the strength of its peace movement, Scotland was a key site of the Cold War in the UK. While there has been some research on how to classify such sites in the...

Harper, Sarah Alexandra

Biography , Object , Cold War , and Material Culture

Conference paper (unpublished)

Concrete Cairns: Bunker Museums and Cold War Memory on Britain’s Peripheries

This paper will examine two Cold War bunkers in Scotland that have been converted into museums. Both buildings’ ‘cold’ lives and afterlives are integral to the curated stories within and the museums’ multiple meanings contested by communities previously kept out by barbed wire fences.

Gledhill, Jim

Abstract

Cable, Link Analyser, Synthesiser: Connecting the Cold War in the Museum

In his book Grammophone, Film, Typewriter, the cultural theorist Friedrich Kittler linked the history of writing and imaging machines to the history of warfare. For him, the computer is fundamentally and essentially a machine that structures the production of knowledge in the Cold War. Kittler’s existentialist analysis, however, is based...

Nehring, Holger

Cold War, exhibitions, museums, and material culture

Abstract

What Colour was the Cold War?

In interviews with museum professionals about museology I asked each participant if they associated any colour with the Cold War. I intended to use colour as a lens on curatorial perceptions, as well as preconceptions, of an historical era. By leading with associations, rather than empirical data, all interviewees had...

Douthwaite, Jessica

Cold War, exhibitions, material culture, and museums

Conference paper (unpublished)

Through the Looking Glass War: Museums and exposing Cold War espionage in contemporary Berlin  

Gledhill, Jim

material culture , Cold War , museums, exhibitions, and espionage

The Vulcan’s Voice: multiple meanings of a Cold War artefact

On 12 April 1984, a massive delta-winged nuclear bomber landed at an airfield in south-east Scotland. Vulcan XM597 was not on a routine journey, but its final flight; for East Fortune was not an active airport, but rather housed an aviation museum, the aircraft’s destination. This moment of transfer was...

Alberti, S J M M

Cold War, exhibitions, museums, aviation, and material culture

Abstract

Readiness for Red Alert: Engaging with the Royal Observer Corps Material Culture 

The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) were a uniformed civilian organisation tasked with preparing for nuclear disaster and would have stepped up to maintain control of Britain had an attack happened during the Cold War. Although stood down in 1991, the legacy of the ROC lives on through the remaining underground...

Harper, Sarah

Royal Observer Corps, aviation , exhibitions , museums, Cold War , and material culture

2023

Still image

Field work images - 28 Group Observed Dundee May 2022

Photographs(s) from fieldwork undertaken at museums and other Cold War heritage sites in Scotland and beyond as part of the ‘Materialising the Cold War’ research project.

Gledhill, Jim

building restoration project, UKWMO Caledonian Sector HQ bunker, Royal Observer Corps’ 28 (Dundee) Group, photographs, and fieldwork